how to execute a program for every ten mins for the entire day in Python

Question

I am working on web crawler app to download the stock price every ten minutes. I am able to extract the quote but I am not sure how to schedule it to run every ten minutes for the entire day. Please suggest me either time loop kind of a thing or the solution for the web crawler app itself.
I need a solution which works on Windows.

@badc0re say suppose i have to print 'hi' every secs for one min. so def f(): print('hi'). how do I run this function ? — Shiva Prakash, Mar 05 '15 at 12:37
@Shiva, You may look at a scheduler in windows which is similar to cron in linux. It runs periodically at whatever the time interval you set it.http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7195503/setting-up-a-cron-job-in-windows — J Bourne, Mar 05 '15 at 13:11

score 6 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 05 '15 at 13:03

6

Ok, so you have a python function f() which you want to execute every ten mins for a day. You can do this:

import time
while True: #Infinite loop
    f() #Execute the function
    time.sleep(600) #Wait 600s (10 min) before re-entering the cycle

And you keep the script running for as long as you need (a day, a week, whatever, it will not close by itself)

answered Mar 05 '15 at 13:03

francisco sollima

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This answer ignores the running time of f(). If f() takes 1 min to run, it will be executed only every 11 min. – horns Mar 05 '15 at 13:19
I didn't understand that from the question, but indeed, my answer executes f() every ten minutes plus the execution time. – francisco sollima Mar 05 '15 at 13:23
@francisco I am not getting the output but there are no errors too :( – Shiva Prakash Mar 05 '15 at 13:24
Can you show the code of the function? Or at least give more details as to what it outputs. – francisco sollima Mar 05 '15 at 13:40

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 05 '15 at 12:35

1

you can do try this

import time

and but this code before dawnload method

time.sleep(10*60) #this will stop the program for 10 minutes

answered Mar 05 '15 at 12:35

Mohamed Ramzy Helmy

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score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 05 '15 at 12:40

1

Use crontab. Open the crontab file via terminal:

$ crontab -e

At the end of the file you can set the python script and the frequency of running it. For example to run a script every 10 mins:

*/10 * * * * /path/to/script

answered Mar 05 '15 at 12:40

barnabas markus

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I am running the program in windows! – Shiva Prakash Mar 05 '15 at 12:42
time.sleep(10*60) works also, but not suggested. if you restart your computer it will not start only if you run it manually. – barnabas markus Mar 05 '15 at 12:42
@ barney let me day I have a function 'f'. how do I execute it after every ten seconds. Can you please let me know the code ? – Shiva Prakash Mar 05 '15 at 12:44
i think there is no crontab for windows. :( – barnabas markus Mar 05 '15 at 12:48
Note that this solution is limited to a script runtime smaller than 10 minutes because the scheduler does not know about job completion. – Michael Jaros Mar 05 '15 at 13:28
i think if the runtime of the script is longer then 10mins, then the crontab will start a new process and let the previous script run till it ends. – barnabas markus Mar 05 '15 at 13:53

score 1 · Answer 4 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:29

Windows has a Task Scheduler built-in. You can use that to run your script:

Otherwise, you can write an infinite loop that will check the stock prices every ten minutes using something like time.sleep(600). Note that you can add your program to run at startup fairly easily:

how to execute a program for every ten mins for the entire day in Python

4 Answers4