cronipy

cronipy turns Python functions into cron jobs. You decorate a function with a schedule, run one command, and cronipy writes the crontab entries for you.

Rather than reinvent cron in Python, cronipy uses your system crontab.

The package is in early development, and the interface can change.

Installation

Requires cron installed on your system.

pip install cronipy

Usage

Define your jobs in a module of your package, e.g. mypackage.tasks_module:

from cronipy import Cron

cron = Cron()

@cron.task("*/5 * * * *")
def do_something_every_five_minutes():
    ...

Then install jobs from all Cron objects in the specified module:

$ cronipy install mypackage.tasks_module

Or, to replace your existing crontab with jobs defined with cronipy:

$ cronipy install mypackage.tasks_module --replace-existing

cronipy adds one line per decorated function into the current user's crontab. Function output is logged in logs/<function name>.log.

Jobs added by cronipy can be cleaned up from your crontab by:

$ cronipy uninstall mypackage.tasks_module

Jobs can be also installed and uninstalled from Python:

cron.install()
# and
cron.uninstall()

Options

You can pass these arguments to Cron:

• dry_run: when true, a job prints its name and does nothing.
• env: a dictionary of environment variables added to every crontab line.
• log_dir: where the log files go, ./logs by default.
• work_dir: the directory each job runs in, ./ by default.
• python: the interpreter the jobs use, the one that runs cronipy by default.

Development

This repository uses uv. Set up a development environment with uv sync, and run the checks with uv run pytest.

Roadmap

• Enable compatibility with single-file modules.
• CLI command to uninstall cronipy entries from crontab..
• Enable autodiscovery of modules containing Cron objects.

License

BSD 3-Clause