How to dynamically add / remove periodic tasks to Celery (celerybeat)

Question

If I have a function defined as follows:

def add(x,y):
  return x+y

Is there a way to dynamically add this function as a celery PeriodicTask and kick it off at runtime? I'd like to be able to do something like (pseudocode):

some_unique_task_id = celery.beat.schedule_task(add, run_every=crontab(minute="*/30"))
celery.beat.start(some_unique_task_id)

I would also want to stop or remove that task dynamically with something like (pseudocode):

celery.beat.remove_task(some_unique_task_id)

or

celery.beat.stop(some_unique_task_id)

FYI I am not using djcelery, which lets you manage periodic tasks via the django admin.

Answer 1

This question was answered on google groups.

I AM NOT THE AUTHOR, all credit goes to Jean Mark

Here's a proper solution for this. Confirmed working, In my scenario, I sub-classed Periodic Task and created a model out of it since I can add other fields to the model as I need and also so I could add the "terminate" method. You have to set the periodic task's enabled property to False and save it before you delete it. The whole subclassing is not a must, the schedule_every method is the one that really does the work. When you're ready to terminate you task (if you didn't subclass it) you can just use PeriodicTask.objects.filter(name=...) to search for your task, disable it, then delete it.

Hope this helps!

from djcelery.models import PeriodicTask, IntervalSchedule
from datetime import datetime

class TaskScheduler(models.Model):

    periodic_task = models.ForeignKey(PeriodicTask)

    @staticmethod
    def schedule_every(task_name, period, every, args=None, kwargs=None):
    """ schedules a task by name every "every" "period". So an example call would be:
         TaskScheduler('mycustomtask', 'seconds', 30, [1,2,3]) 
         that would schedule your custom task to run every 30 seconds with the arguments 1,2 and 3 passed to the actual task. 
    """
        permissible_periods = ['days', 'hours', 'minutes', 'seconds']
        if period not in permissible_periods:
            raise Exception('Invalid period specified')
        # create the periodic task and the interval
        ptask_name = "%s_%s" % (task_name, datetime.datetime.now()) # create some name for the period task
        interval_schedules = IntervalSchedule.objects.filter(period=period, every=every)
        if interval_schedules: # just check if interval schedules exist like that already and reuse em
            interval_schedule = interval_schedules[0]
        else: # create a brand new interval schedule
            interval_schedule = IntervalSchedule()
            interval_schedule.every = every # should check to make sure this is a positive int
            interval_schedule.period = period 
            interval_schedule.save()
        ptask = PeriodicTask(name=ptask_name, task=task_name, interval=interval_schedule)
        if args:
            ptask.args = args
        if kwargs:
            ptask.kwargs = kwargs
        ptask.save()
        return TaskScheduler.objects.create(periodic_task=ptask)

    def stop(self):
        """pauses the task"""
        ptask = self.periodic_task
        ptask.enabled = False
        ptask.save()

    def start(self):
        """starts the task"""
        ptask = self.periodic_task
        ptask.enabled = True
        ptask.save()

    def terminate(self):
        self.stop()
        ptask = self.periodic_task
        self.delete()
        ptask.delete()