Automate the Boring Stuff with Python

Chapter 15. Keeping Time, Scheduling Tasks, and Launching Programs

Running programs while you’re sitting at your computer is fine, but it’s also useful to have programs run without your direct supervision. Your computer’s clock can schedule programs to run code at some specified time and date or at regular intervals. For example, your program could scrape a website every hour to check for changes or do a CPU-intensive task at 4 AM while you sleep. Python’s time and datetime modules provide these functions.

You can also write programs that launch other programs on a schedule by using the subprocess and threading modules. Often, the fastest way to program is to take advantage of applications that other people have already written.

The time Module ...