How to schedule a function in Flask App daily at every 5 minutes in Python

Question

I would like to know how the check function can be executed everyday at 5 minutes interval.

import time
from flask import Flask

def check():
    print(time.time())


app = Flask(__name__)

if __name__ == '__main__':
    app.run()

Update

I tried the below but nothing happended.

from apscheduler.triggers.combining import AndTrigger
from apscheduler.triggers.interval import IntervalTrigger
from apscheduler.triggers.cron import CronTrigger


trigger = AndTrigger([IntervalTrigger(minutes=5),
                      CronTrigger(day_of_week='mon,tue,wed,thu,fri)])
scheduler.add_job(job_function, trigger)

Answer 1

you need to schedule a Cron job with Crontab if you are planing to deploy your Flask app on unix-like server. for windows server i have no clue how to do that but for sure you can plan tasks.

try python-crontab package if you need to manipulate dynamically your crontab , it's not mandatory for your case if you have the needed permissions on hosting server to insert an entry in user crontab file

few resources that may help you affording this

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cron
• https://stackabuse.com/scheduling-jobs-with-python-crontab/ (tutorial about the python-crontab )
• https://medium.com/@gavinwiener/how-to-schedule-a-python-script-cron-job-dea6cbf69f4e

you need a separate and standalone python script apart from your Flask app since cron can't execute a remote http request like curl / wget only shell/python/.. scripts, commands.., meaning in your case you can't insert https://myflaskapp.dev/check in crontab like

5 * * * * https://myflaskapp.dev/check

but the work around is that your cron job execute standalone python script which send/execute an http request to that endpoint like:

5 * * * * /home/webapps/www/myflaskapp.dev/check.py

in check.py you can put simple python script using requests library that just make an http request (get,post..) depending on your logic in check function

# importing the requests library 
import requests 
  
# endpoint 
URL = "http://myflaskapp.dev/check"

# defining a params dict for the parameters to be sent to the API (Optionnal)
PARAMS = {'param1': param1}

# sending get request and saving the response as response object 
r = requests.get(url = URL, params = PARAMS) 

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