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Python Crontab API

Project description

Python Crontab Logo

Bug Reports and Development

Please report any problems to the launchpad bug tracker. Please use Git and push patches to the launchpad project code hosting.

Note: If you get the error TypeError: __init__() takes exactly 2 arguments when using CronTab, you have the wrong module installed. You need to install python-crontab and not crontab from pypi or your local package manager and try again.

Description

Crontab module for read and writing crontab files and accessing the system cron automatically and simply using a direct API.

Comparing the below chart you will note that W, L, # and ? symbols are not supported as they are not standard Linux or SystemV crontab format.

Field Name

Mandatory

Allowed Values

Special Characters

Extra Values

Minutes

Yes

0-59

* / , -

< >

Hours

Yes

0-23

* / , -

< >

Day of month

Yes

1-31

* / , -

< >

Month

Yes

1-12 or JAN-DEC

* / , -

< >

Day of week

Yes

0-6 or SUN-SAT

* / , -

< >

Extra Values are ‘<’ for minimum value, such as 0 for minutes or 1 for months. And ‘>’ for maximum value, such as 23 for hours or 12 for months.

Supported special cases allow crontab lines to not use fields. These are the supported aliases which are not available in SystemV mode:

Case

Meaning

@reboot

Every boot

@hourly

0 * * * *

@daily

0 0 * * *

@weekly

0 0 * * 0

@monthly

0 0 1 * *

@yearly

0 0 1 1 *

@annually

0 0 1 1 *

@midnight

0 0 * * *

How to Use the Module

Getting access to a crontab can happen in five ways, three system methods that will work only on Unix and require you to have the right permissions:

from crontab import CronTab

empty_cron    = CronTab()
my_user_cron  = CronTab(user=True)
users_cron    = CronTab(user='username')

And two ways from non-system sources that will work on Windows too:

file_cron = CronTab(tabfile='filename.tab')
mem_cron = CronTab(tab="""
  * * * * * command
""")

Special per-command user flag for vixie cron format (new in 1.9):

system_cron = CronTab(tabfile='/etc/crontab', user=False)
job = system_cron[0]
job.user != None
system_cron.new(command='new_command', user='root')

Creating a new job is as simple as:

job  = cron.new(command='/usr/bin/echo')

And setting the job’s time restrictions:

job.minute.during(5,50).every(5)
job.hour.every(4)
job.day.on(4, 5, 6)

job.dow.on('SUN')
job.dow.on('SUN', 'FRI')
job.month.during('APR', 'NOV')

Each time restriction will clear the previous restriction:

job.hour.every(10) # Set to * */10 * * *
job.hour.on(2)     # Set to * 2 * * *

Appending restrictions is explicit:

job.hour.every(10)  # Set to * */10 * * *
job.hour.also.on(2) # Set to * 2,*/10 * * *

Setting all time slices at once:

job.setall(2, 10, '2-4', '*/2', None)
job.setall('2 10 * * *')

Setting the slice to a python date object:

job.setall(time(10, 2))
job.setall(date(2000, 4, 2))
job.setall(datetime(2000, 4, 2, 10, 2))

Run a jobs command. Running the job here will not effect it’s existing schedule with another crontab process:

job_standard_output = job.run()

Creating a job with a comment:

job = cron.new(command='/foo/bar', comment='SomeID')

Get the comment or command for a job:

command = job.command
comment = job.comment

Modify the comment or command on a job:

job.set_command("new_script.sh")
job.set_comment("New ID or comment here")

Disabled or Enable Job:

job.enable()
job.enable(False)
False == job.is_enabled()

Validity Check:

True == job.is_valid()

Use a special syntax:

job.every_reboot()

Find an existing job by command:

iter = cron.find_command('bar')

Find an existing job by comment:

iter = cron.find_comment('ID or some text')

Find an existing job by schedule:

iter = cron.find_time(2, 10, '2-4', '*/2', None)
iter = cron.find_time("*/2 * * * *")

Clean a job of all rules:

job.clear()

Iterate through all jobs:

for job in cron:
    print job

Iterate through all lines:

for line in cron.lines:
    print line

Iterate through environment variables:

for (name, value) in cron.env.items():
    print name
    print value

Create new or update enviroment variable:

cron.env['SHELL'] = '/bin/bash'

Remove Items:

cron.remove( job )
cron.remove_all('echo')
cron.remove_all(comment='foo')
cron.remove_all(time='*/2')

Clear entire cron of all jobs:

cron.remove_all()

Write CronTab back to system or filename:

cron.write()

Write CronTab to new filename:

cron.write( 'output.tab' )

Write to this user’s crontab (unix only):

cron.write_to_user( user=True )

Write to some other user’s crontab:

cron.write_to_user( user='bob' )

Validate a cron time string:

from crontab import CronSlices
bool = CronSlices.is_valid('0/2 * * * *')

Proceeding Unit Confusion

It is sometimes logical to think that job.hour.every(2) will set all proceeding units to ‘0’ and thus result in “0 */2 * * *”. Instead you are controlling only the hours units and the minute column is unaffected. The real result would be “* */2 * * *” and maybe unexpected to those unfamiliar with crontabs.

There is a special ‘every’ method on a job to clear the job’s existing schedule and replace it with a simple single unit:

job.every(4).hours()  == '0 */4 * * *'
job.every().dom()     == '0 0 * * *'
job.every().month()   == '0 0 0 * *'
job.every(2).dows()   == '0 0 * * */2'

This is a convenience method only, it does normal things with the existing api.

Running the Scheduler

The module is able to run a cron tab as a daemon as long as the optional croniter module is installed; each process will block and errors will be logged (new in 2.0).

(note this functionality is new and not perfect, if you find bugs report them!)

Running the scheduler:

tab = CronTab(tabfile='MyScripts.tab')
for result in tab.run_scheduler():
    print "This was printed to stdout by the process."

Do not do this, it won’t work because it returns generator function:

tab.run_scheduler()

Frequency Calculation

Every job’s schedule has a frequency. We can attempt to calculate the number of times a job would execute in a give amount of time. We have three simple methods:

job.setall("1,2 1,2 * * *")
job.frequency_per_day() == 4

The per year frequency method will tell you how many days a year the job would execute:

job.setall("* * 1,2 1,2 *")
job.frequency_per_year(year=2010) == 4

These are combined to give the number of times a job will execute in any year:

job.setall("1,2 1,2 1,2 1,2 *")
job.frequency(year=2010) == 16

Frequency can be quickly checked using python built-in operators:

job < "*/2 * * * *"
job > job2
job.slices == "*/5"

Log Functionality

The log functionality will read a cron log backwards to find you the last run instances of your crontab and cron jobs.

The crontab will limit the returned entries to the user the crontab is for:

cron = CronTab(user='root')

for d in cron.log:
    print d['pid'] + " - " + d['date']

Each job can return a log iterator too, these are filtered so you can see when the last execution was:

for d in cron.find_command('echo')[0].log:
    print d['pid'] + " - " + d['date']

All System CronTabs Functionality

The crontabs (note the plural) module can attempt to find all crontabs on the system. This works well for Linux systems with known locations for cron files and user spolls. It will even extract anacron jobs so you can get a picture of all the jobs running on your system:

from crontabs import CronTabs

for cron in CronTabs():
    print repr(cron)

All jobs can be brought together to run various searches, all jobs are added to a CronTab object which can be used as documented above:

jobs = CronTabs().all.find_command('foo')

Schedule Functionality

If you have the croniter python module installed, you will have access to a schedule on each job. For example if you want to know when a job will next run:

schedule = job.schedule(date_from=datetime.now())

This creates a schedule croniter based on the job from the time specified. The default date_from is the current date/time if not specified. Next we can get the datetime of the next job:

datetime = schedule.get_next()

Or the previous:

datetime = schedule.get_prev()

The get methods work in the same way as the default croniter, except that they will return datetime objects by default instead of floats. If you want the original functionality, pass float into the method when calling:

datetime = schedule.get_current(float)

If you don’t have the croniter module installed, you’ll get an ImportError when you first try using the schedule function on your cron job object.

Extra Support

  • Support for vixie cron with username addition with user flag

  • Support for SunOS, AIX & HP with compatibility ‘SystemV’ mode.

  • Python 3.4 and Python 2.7/2.6 tested.

  • Windows support works for non-system crontabs only. ( see mem_cron and file_cron examples above for usage )

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