how to automate running a python script

Question

How can I automate running of 3 python scripts. Suppose, I have 3 scripts say a.py,b.py and c.py.

Here a.py runs a web crawler and saves it as a xml file. Now b.py parses the xml file generated and saves as a pickle file. Now c.py inserts the list from pickle file to database.

Is there a way to automate this?

Answer 1

Just make a shell script which does

python a.py && python b.py && python c.py

The && in bash is for chaining commands consecutively, eg here b.py would only execute if a.py completed successfully (ie returned 0).

Save it in a file with no extension (some version of cron won't use .sh files, I found this out the long and frustrating way), then put the location of that shell script in your cron table using crontab -e . There is plenty of information on superuser about how to schedule cron jobs, so I recommend to search there for this information rather than here on SO (which is more about programming).

Answer 2

Write a wrapper python script that imports a, b and c and runs then in sequence (with error checking, notification and accounting). Then schedule this wrapper using the system cron daemon (if on UNIX).