How to Setup Cron Job Task Scheduling in Django?

Hi Dev,

In this tute, we will discuss how to setup cron job task scheduling in django. In this article, we will implement a how to use cron job in django. step by step explain how to use django-crontab. you can understand a concept of django-crontab task scheduling example. you will do the following things for django cron tab task scheduling tutorial.

Cron is a programme that allows Unix system users to automatically execute scripts, commands, or software at a predefined date and time, or according to a predefined cycle.

For this example, we'll use django-crontab. Open a terminal in your project's root directory and type

Here i explained simply step by step example of how to setup cron job task scheduling in django.

Step 1: Create a Project

In this step, we’ll create a new django project using the django-admin. Head back to your command-line interface and run the following command:

django-admin startproject example

Step 2: Create a App

Now we'll create a single app called core to store a list of post names. We're keeping things intentionally basic. Stop the local server with Control+c and use the startapp command to create this new app.

python3 manage.py startapp core

Step 3: Installing the django-crontab library

In this section first of all we need to install django-crontab library through below following command:

pip install django-crontab

Step 4: Create cron.py File

Assume our file is core/cron.py for this example. In this file, we must define the function that will be executed automatically by cron.

import logging
# Get an instance of a logger
logger = logging.getLogger(__name__)

def my_cron_job():
    print('Hello World')
    logging.info("It's Working!")

Step 5: Update setting.py

Then update INSTALLED_APPS within our settings.py file to notify Django about the app.

....
INSTALLED_APPS = [
    
    'core',
    'django_crontab'
]

import logging

LOGGING = {
    'version': 1,
    # The version number of our log
    'disable_existing_loggers': False,
    'formatters': {
        'file': {
            'format': '%(asctime)s %(name)-12s %(levelname)-8s: %(message)s'
        }
    },
    # django uses some of its own loggers for internal operations. In case you want to disable them just replace the False above with true.
    # A handler for WARNING. It is basically writing the WARNING messages into a file called WARNING.log
    'handlers': {
        'file': {
            'level': 'INFO',
            'class': 'logging.FileHandler',
            'filename': BASE_DIR / 'info.log',
            'formatter':'file'
        },
    },
    # A logger for WARNING which has a handler called 'file'. A logger can have multiple handler
    'loggers': {
       # notice the blank '', Usually you would put built in loggers like django or root here based on your needs
        '': {
            'handlers': ['file'], #notice how file variable is called in handler which has been defined above
            'level': 'INFO',
            'propagate': True,
        },
    },
}

CRONJOBS = [
    ('*/1 * * * *', 'core.cron.my_cron_job') #This cron run every minute
]

The above cron job is set to run every hour on the one minute.

Keyword or positional arguments are also acceptable:

CRONJOBS = [
    (‘0 0 1 * *’, core.cron.other_cron_job’, [‘pos_arg1’, ‘pos_arg2’], {‘verbose’: ‘key_arg’}),
]

You can add, show and remove this below following command:

python manage.py crontab add
python manage.py crontab show
python manage.py crontab remove

Output

So, now you can check this your info.log file and see the below output.

2022-12-10 04:31:02,599 root         INFO    : It's Working!
2022-12-10 04:32:03,151 root         INFO    : It's Working!

I hope it will help you....

Happy Coding!