I have a Python 3 script that will run an infinite loop, 24/7. It makes a website connection and goes to a certain webpage to download a file.
Each iteration will take about a minute, but I need the script to start each iteration at exact times, about 5 minutes apart. For instance: at 1 minute after the hour, 6 minutes after the hour, 11 minutes after the hour, etc. I need the script to sleep between iterations until the exact time to start again. Just wondering if there's a clean way to do this?
EDIT: Based on answers given so far, I think I need to re-phrase my question. Basically, what is needed is to calculate the time between the time the last iteration ended and when I want the next iteration to begin. In other words, I need the difference between now, the current time, and the next time the minute of the time is either 01, 06, 11, 16, 21, 26, 31, 36, 41, 46, 51, 56 and the seconds of the time is 00. Then I can time.sleep() the script for that amount of time.
Check out the requests library for making web connections and put the script in a cron job to have it run every 5 min.
Well, I believe they call this a "kludge". I posted the below with a bunch of comments and print lines left in for clarification and to see how this works. In any event, this seems to be working pretty well. Each loop will begin (except the first loop) at either ?1:30 and ?6:30, exactly 5 minutes apart and within just a few milliseconds of when the loop is due to start. Of course, it will need to be edited if you decide to use it but, maybe this is a helpful start.
##### import modules
import time
import datetime
from datetime import datetime
from datetime import timedelta
##### create list of possible loop start times; this here creates start times every 5 minutes, starting the loops at 01:30, 06:30, 11:30, etc., after the hour
dt_cur = datetime.now()
dt_4_list = datetime.strptime(str(dt_cur.year) + '-' + str(dt_cur.month) + '-' + str(dt_cur.day) + ' ' + str(dt_cur.hour) + ':1:30', '%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S')
ls_dt = [dt_4_list]
for i in range(288):
dt_4_list = dt_4_list + timedelta(minutes = 5)
ls_dt.append(dt_4_list)
##### begin the loop
loop_timer = 0
while loop_timer < 275:
if loop_timer > 0:
##### check if the loop started before the exact time due to time.sleep() not being exactly accurate
time_check = datetime.now().strftime("%S.%f")
time_check = float(time_check)
loop_time_check = 0
while time_check < 30 and loop_time_check < 100:
time_check = datetime.now().strftime("%S.%f")
time_check = float(time_check)
print(time_check, '- WARNING: time_check < 30; loop =', loop_time_check + 1, flush=True)
time.sleep(.025)
loop_time_check += 1
if loop_time_check == 100:
print(time_check, '- WARNING: exiting script early; time_check < 30 100 times', flush=True)
raise SystemExit()
########################################################################################################################
##### start doing stuff here ##########################################################################################
dt_cur = datetime.now()
print(dt_cur, flush=True)
for i in range(5): ##### this is where your own script does it's work before resting until the next loop
print(i, flush=True)
time.sleep(1)
##### end doing stuff here #############################################################################################
########################################################################################################################
##### create the current datetime var
dt_cur = datetime.now()
print(dt_cur, flush=True)
##### create the dt_next_loop time var, increment the loop
for d in ls_dt:
if d > dt_cur:
dt_next_loop = d
break
loop_timer += 1
##### get the seconds to sleep the script but make it about 5 seconds short of the actual time to begin the next loop
sleep_secs = (dt_next_loop - dt_cur) - timedelta(seconds=5)
sleep_secs = timedelta.total_seconds(sleep_secs)
time.sleep(sleep_secs)
##### sleep the script about 5 seconds more before the actual time to begin the next loop (sleep.time() is not precisely accurate
##### over minutes and doing this again 5 seconds before the time to begin the next loop will ensure more accuracy)
sleep_secs = datetime.now().strftime("%S.%f")
sleep_secs = 30 - float(sleep_secs)
time.sleep(sleep_secs)
Related
I have a question on how I am able to set the timer so that every time it exits the loop it sets the time back to 2 seconds. The problem is that the first time the sound works after 2 seconds, the next times it is executed immediately. Thank you very much in advance for any advice.
This is my code:
time = 2
while time > 0:
timer = datetime.timedelta(seconds=time)
time -= 1
duration = 1000
freq = 440
winsound.Beep(freq, duration)
I am not sure if you meant that, but for me it seems like you just want to wait 2 seconds before executing the next steps. You can do that like so:
import time
while True:
time.sleep(2) # waits 2 seconds
winsound.Beep(440, 1000)
Anyways I don't recommend you to use a plain infinite loop, without a break statement. Therefore I recommend you to add one, like down below.
import time
while True:
time.sleep(2) # waits 2 seconds
winsound.Beep(440, 1000)
if True: # break on a specific statment
break
Edit: As CrazyChucky mentioned in the comments, this approach should work fine in most of the cases, but it can end up being more than two seconds sometimes. Therefore you should work with timedeltas or take a look at scheduler.
To be more accurate as possible use:
import time
timer = 0
step = 2
t0 = time.time()
while True:
timer = time.time() - t0
wait = step - timer
time.sleep(wait)
print(time.time())
winsound.Beep(freq, duration)
t0 = time.time()
This script take in count the execution time of script lines for your computer.
You just have to reinitialize the time at the end of the loop
time = 2
while True:
timer = datetime.timedelta(seconds=time)
time -= 1
duration = 1000
freq = 440
if time == 0:
time = 2
break
winsound.Beep(freq, duration)
I'm relatively new to Python so I don't know how difficult or easy this is to solve, but I'm trying to make a function that can measure time without blocking other code from executing while doing so. Here's what I have:
import time
def tick(secs):
start = time.time()
while True:
end = time.time()
elapsed = end - start
if elapsed >= secs:
return elapsed
break
input("what time is it?: ")
print(f"one: {round(tick(1))}")
print(f"two: {round(tick(2))}")
print(f"three: {round(tick(3))}")
print(f"four: {round(tick(4))}")
print(f"five: {round(tick(5))}")
The input blocks the timer from starting until it gets input, and the tick()'s after dont run simultaneously. Thus running one at a time like, wait 1 second then wait 2 seconds instead of wait 5 seconds (to be clear I want all timers that are started to run at the same time others are, so the 5 second timer would start at the same time the 1 second one does), thank you for your time and please let me know if you have a solution for this.
Not exactly sure what you are asking for, but how does this look:
import time
start=time.time()
input("what time is it?: ")
time.sleep(1)
print(time.time()-start)
time.sleep(2)
print(time.time()-start)
time.sleep(3)
print(time.time()-start)
time.sleep(4)
print(time.time()-start)
time.sleep(5)
print(time.time()-start)
The tick's are not running simultanously because your are first waiting for 1 second, then again you are waiting for 2, then again for 3, etc.
A simple thing to do is have a list of time intervals you want to "pause" at, in your case [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] which are sorted numerically. You will then keep track of the current index by checking elapsed >= secs and if it succedds you will increment it by one. Here's a glance
import time
def tick(tocks: list):
"""Tocks is a list of the time intervals which you want to be
notified at when are reached, all of them are going to run in parallel.
"""
tocks = sorted(tocks)
current = 0 # we are at index 0 which is the lowest interval
start = time.time()
while current < len(tocks): # while we have not reached the last interval
end = time.time()
elapsed = end - start
if elapsed >= tocks[current]: # if the current interval has passed check for the next
print(f"Tock: {tocks[current]}")
current += 1
This function can then be called like this
tick([1, 2, 3, 4, 5])
This will print 1 to 5 seconds at the same time. Here is the output
Tock: 1 # at 1 sec
Tock: 2 # at 2 sec
Tock: 3 # at 3 sec
Tock: 4 # .....
Tock: 5
You can imagine that this may have some minor flaws if you choose really close numbers like [0.5, 0.50001, 0.50002] and because the difference is so small 0.0001 seconds may not actually pass.
You could also try multithreading as has been noted, but it will be a very CPU-intensive (imagine wanting to count to 100 and you have to open 100 threads) task for something very simple.
I'm making a program that runs something for the amount of minutes the user alots (it's an idle game in beta). I put on a timer for one minute and noticed that the program ran over the minute by a couple of seconds-- Not very noticable, but I was wondering if this is because of how long a loop takes to execute? This is my code:
import time
foreverloop = True
automodeOn = False
idleSec = 0
idleMin = 0
pages = 0
pps = 0
while foreverloop:
if automodeOn == False:
msg = input("BTCG Command >> ")
if msg == 'auto':
autotime = input("How long would you like to go idle for? Answer in minutes.")
automodeOn = True
elif msg == 'autoMORE':
pps += .5
else:
pages += pps
print("You have auto-read",pps,"pages.")
idleSec += 1
if idleSec == 60:
idleSec = 0
idleMin += 1
if idleMin == int(autotime):
print("Idle mode turning off.")
automodeOn = False
time.sleep(1)
You could measure the time it takes for a number of lines of code to execute by measuring the start time:
start = time.time()
before any number of lines you'd like to measure the time, then at the end adding:
end = time.time()
the time elapse is then calculated as their subtraction:
elapsed_time = end-start
I suggest that you read about code complexity, the most popular of which is the Big O notation.
edit: as denoted in a comment, timeit is the better option if you're looking to precisely measure the time it takes for a certain line or function to execute, the main difference between the 2 approaches is that timeit is made specifically for this purpose and as part of this takes as a parameter a variable number indicating the number of times the specified code is run before determining how long it takes on average to run.
Instead of making the program wait in adittion to the time it takes to execute, I would use time.time() to get the system's current UNIX time in seconds as a float and only continue if a certain time has passed:
import time
time_begin = time.time()
wait_time = 60 # seconds to wait
while time.time() < time_begin + wait_time:
# do logic
print("Time passed:", time.time() - time_begin)
time.sleep(1) # can be whatever
print(wait_time, "seconds has passed!")
I am trying to make a python script that works in a loop mode with iteration through a text file to run for periods of one hour and make 30minute pauses between each hour loop .
After some searching I found this piece of code :
import datetime
import time
delta_hour = 0
while:
now_hour = datetime.datetime.now().hour
if delta_hour != now_hour:
# run your code
delta_hour = now_hour
time.sleep(1800) # 1800 seconds sleep
# add some way to exit the infinite loop
This code has a few issues though :
It does not consider one hour periods since the script starts running
It does not seem to work continuously for periods over one hour
Considering what I am trying to achieve (running script 1hour before each time it pauses for 30mins) what is the best approach to this ? Cron is not an option here .
For clarification :
1hour run -- 30min pause -- repeat
Thanks
Here is a so simple code, I have written for teaching purposes, which is very clear
from datetime import datetime
class control_process():
def __init__(self, woking_period, sleeping_period):
self.woking_period = woking_period # working period in minutes
self.sleeping_period = sleeping_period # sleeping period in minutes
self.reset()
def reset(self):
self.start_time = datetime.utcnow() # set starting point
def manage(self):
m = (datetime.utcnow() - self.start_time).seconds / 60 # how long since starting point
if m >= self.woking_period: # if exceeded the working period
time.sleep(self.sleeping_period * 60) # time to sleep in seconds
self.reset() # then reset time again
return # go to continue working
cp = control_process(60, 30) # release for 60 minutes and sleep for 30 minutes
while True: # you code loop
cp.manage()
'''
your code
'''
in which 'control_processobject - I calledcp- callscp.manage()` inside your executing loop.
you reset time via cp.reset() before going in the loop or whenever you want
Based on Comments
The simplicity I mean is to add this class to your general library so you can use it whenever you want by instantiation of cp then one or two controlling functions 'cp.manage()` which control the working cycles, and cp.reset() if you want to use it in another location of the code. I believe that use a function is better than a long condition statement.
Using the default library you could do something like call the script itself using subprocess. By checking whether conditions are met the process could do a task and call itself. Extending the logic with a kill pill would make it stop (I leave that up to you).
import argparse, time
from subprocess import call
DELAY = 60 * 30 # minutes
WORK_TIME = 60 * 60 # minutes
parser = argparse.ArgumentParser()
parser.add_argument("-s",
help = "interval start time",
type = float,
default = time.time())
parser.add_argument("-t",
help = "interval stop time",
type = float,
default = time.time() + WORK_TIME)
def do_task():
# implement task
print("working..")
return
if __name__ == "__main__":
args = parser.parse_args()
start = args.s
stop = args.t
# work
if start < time.time() < stop:
do_task()
# shift target
else:
start = time.time() + DELAY
stop = start + WORK_TIME
call(f"python test.py -t {stop} -s {start}".split())
The simplest solution I could come up with was the following piece of code, which I added inside my main thread :
start_time = int(time())
... #main thread code
#main thread code end
if int(time() - start_time >= 60 * 60):
print("pausing time")
sleep(30 * 60)
start_time = int(time())
From the moment the script starts this will pause every hour for 30mins and resume afterwards .
Simple yet effective !
I'm trying to generate some random seeded times to tell my script when to fire each of the scripts from within a main script.
I want to set a time frame of:
START_TIME = "02:00"
END_TIME = "03:00"
When it reaches the start time, it needs to look at how many scripts we have to run:
script1.do_proc()
script2.alter()
script3.noneex()
In this case there are 3 to run, so it needs to generate 3 randomized times to start those scripts with a minimum separation of 5 mins between each script but the times must be within the time set in START_TIME and END_TIME
But, it also needs to know that script1.main is ALWAYS the first script to fire, other scripts can be shuffled around (random)
So we could potentially have script1 running at 01:43 and then script3 running at 01:55 and then script2 might run at 02:59
We could also potentially have script1 running at 01:35 and then script3 running at 01:45 and then script2 might run at 01:45 which is also fine.
My script so far can be found below:
import random
import pytz
from time import sleep
from datetime import datetime
import script1
import script2
import script3
START_TIME = "01:21"
END_TIME = "03:00"
while 1:
try:
# Set current time & dates for GMT, London
CURRENT_GMTTIME = datetime.now(pytz.timezone('Europe/London')).strftime("%H%M")
CURRENT_GMTDAY = datetime.now(pytz.timezone('Europe/London')).strftime("%d%m%Y")
sleep(5)
# Grab old day for comparisons
try:
with open("DATECHECK.txt", 'rb') as DATECHECK:
OLD_DAY = DATECHECK.read()
except IOError:
with open("DATECHECK.txt", 'wb') as DATECHECK:
DATECHECK.write("0")
OLD_DAY = 0
# Check for new day, if it's a new day do more
if int(CURRENT_GMTDAY) != int(OLD_DAY):
print "New Day"
# Check that we are in the correct period of time to start running
if int(CURRENT_GMTTIME) <= int(START_TIME.replace(":", "")) and int(CURRENT_GMTTIME) >= int(END_TIME.replace(":", "")):
print "Correct time, starting"
# Unsure how to seed the start times for the scripts below
script1.do_proc()
script2.alter()
script3.noneex()
# Unsure how to seed the start times for above
# Save the current day to prevent it from running again today.
with open("DATECHECK.txt", 'wb') as DATECHECK:
DATECHECK.write(CURRENT_GMTDAY)
print "Completed"
else:
pass
else:
pass
except Exception:
print "Error..."
sleep(60)
EDIT 31/03/2016
Let's say I add the following
SCRIPTS = ["script1.test()", "script2.test()", "script3.test()"]
MAIN_SCRIPT = "script1.test()"
TIME_DIFFERENCE = datetime.strptime(END_TIME, "%H:%M") - datetime.strptime(START_TIME, "%H:%M")
TIME_DIFFERENCE = TIME_DIFFERENCE.seconds
We now have the the number of scripts to run
We have the list of the script to run.
We have the name of the main script, the one to run first.
We have the time in seconds to show how much time we have in total to run all the scripts within.
Surely there is a way we can just plug some sort of loop to make it do it all..
for i in range(len(SCRIPTS)), which is 3 times
Generate 3 seeds, making sure the minimum time is of 300 and all together the 3 seeds must not exceed TIME_DIFFERENCE
Create the start time based on RUN_TIME = START_TIME and then RUN_TIME = RUN_TIME + SEED[i]
First loop would check that that MAIN_SCRIPT exists within SCRIPTS, if it does then it would run that script first, delete itself from SCRIPTS and then on next loops, as it doesn't exist in SCRIPTS it would switch to randomly calling one of the other scripts.
Seeding the times
The following appears to work, there might be an easier way of doing this though.
CALCULATE_SEEDS = 0
NEW_SEED = 0
SEEDS_SUCESSS = False
SEEDS = []
while SEEDS_SUCESSS == False:
# Generate a new seed number
NEW_SEED = random.randrange(0, TIME_DIFFERENCE)
# Make sure the seed is above the minimum number
if NEW_SEED > 300:
SEEDS.append(NEW_SEED)
# Make sure we have the same amount of seeds as scripts before continuing.
if len(SEEDS) == len(SCRIPTS):
# Calculate all of the seeds together
for SEED in SEEDS:
CALCULATE_SEEDS += SEED
# Make sure the calculated seeds added together is smaller than the total time difference
if CALCULATE_SEEDS >= TIME_DIFFERENCE:
# Reset and try again if it's not below the number
SEEDS = []
else:
# Exit while loop if we have a correct amount of seeds with minimum times.
SEEDS_SUCESSS = True
Use datetime.timedelta to compute time differences. This code assumes all three processes run on the same day
from datetime import datetime, timedelta
from random import randint
YR, MO, DY = 2016, 3, 30
START_TIME = datetime( YR, MO, DY, 1, 21, 00 ) # "01:21"
END_TIME = datetime( YR, MO, DY, 3, 0, 0 ) # "3:00"
duration_all = (END_TIME - START_TIME).seconds
d1 = ( duration_all - 600 ) // 3
#
rnd1 = randint(0,d1)
rnd2 = rnd1 + 300 + randint(0,d1)
rnd3 = rnd2 + 300 + randint(0,d1)
#
time1 = START_TIME + timedelta(seconds=rnd1)
time2 = START_TIME + timedelta(seconds=rnd2)
time3 = START_TIME + timedelta(seconds=rnd3)
#
print (time1)
print (time2)
print (time3)
Values of rnd1, rnd2and rnd3 are at least 5 minutes (300 seconds) apart.
Values of rnd3 cannot be greater than the total time interval (3 * d1 + 600). So all three times occur inside the interval.
NB You did not specify how much time each script runs. That is why I did not use time.sleep. A possible option would be threading.Timer (see python documentation).
Assume you store all the method.func() in an array and, as u described, subsequent scripts must be at least 5 mins after script1. They can be executed randomly, so we can launch multiple processes and let them sleep for a period before they can automatically start. (Timing is in seconds)
from multiprocessing import Process
import os
import random
import time
#store all scripts you want to execute here
eval_scripts = ["script1.test()","script2.test()", "script3.test()"]
#run job on different processes. non-blocking
def run_job(eval_string,time_sleep):
#print out script + time to test
print eval_string + " " + str(time_sleep)
time.sleep(time_sleep) #wait to be executed
#time to start
eval(eval_string)
def do_my_jobs():
start_time = []
#assume the duration between start_time and end_time is 60 mins, leave some time for other jobs after the first job (5-10 mins). This is just to be careful in case random.randrange returns the largest number
#adjust this according to the duration between start_time and end_time since calculating (end_time - star_time) is trivial.
proc1_start_time = random.randrange(60*60 - 10*60)
start_time.append(proc1_start_time)
#randomize timing for other procs != first script
for i in range(len(eval_scripts)-1):
#randomize time from (proc1_start_time + 5 mins) to (end_time - star_time)
start_time.append(random.randint(proc1_start_time+5*60, 60*60))
for i in range(len(eval_scripts)):
p_t = Process(target = run_job, args = (eval_scripts[i],start_time[i],))
p_t.start()
p_t.join()
Now all you need to do is to call do_my_jobs() only ONCE at START_TIME every day.