timer2 0.1.0

Introduction

The timer2 module lets you schedule Python functions at specific times, or at an interval. It can be used as a replacement to threading.Timer, the difference is that timer2 is always only using a single thread (unless you manually start more of them)

You should never use this to apply expensive operations, as this would not be effective when running in a single thread, rather you should make the timer move the operations to a execution pool (like a thread/multiprocessing pool, or maybe sending a message):

>>> pool = multiprocessing.Pool()
>>> timer2.apply_after(10000, pool.apply_async, (expensive_fun, ))

Documentation

Timer is using Sphinx, and the latest documentation is available at GitHub:

http://ask.github.com/timer2

$ pip install timer2

$ easy_install timer2

$ python setup.py build
# python setup.py install # as root

>>> import timer2
>>> timer2.apply_after(msecs, fun, args, kwargs, priority=0)

>>> timer2.apply_interval(msecs, fun, args, kwargs, priority=0)

>>> timer2.apply_at(datetime, fun, args, kwargs, priority=0)

Cancelling timers

The apply_* functions returns a timer2.Entry instance, you can use this to cancel the execution:

>>> tref = timer2.apply_after(msecs, fun, args, kwargs)
>>> tref.cancel()

Running custom Timer threads

When using the module interface a default timer thread is started as soon as you schedule something. If you want to keep track of the thread manually, you can use the timer2.Timer class:

>>> timer = timer2.Timer()
>>> timer.apply_after(msecs, fun, args, kwargs)
>>> timer.stop() # stops the thread and joins it.