Automating Django admin tasks

In my blog, there are some recurring tasks (such as e.g. the refresh of the Covid19 statistics).

They are implemented as management tasks by implemeting them under the app in covid/management/commands/refresh_covid.py:

covid/management/commands/refresh_covid.py

 1from django.core.management.base import BaseCommand
 2
 3class Command(BaseCommand):
 4
 5    help = 'Refreshes the covid info in the database'
 6
 7    def handle(self, *args, **options):
 8        self._log_info("Refreshing the covid info")
 9        # Run the actual refresh routine
10        self._log_info("Refreshed the covid info")
11
12    def _log_info(self, *msg):
13        full_msg = ' '.join(msg)
14        self.stdout.write(self.style.SUCCESS(full_msg))

By implementing the commands this way, I can easily run them using manage.py:

1$ ./manage.py refresh_covid

However, when I want to trigger them manually or execute them automatically using tools such as apscheduler, you need a way to call them from code.

This can be achieved by using the django.core.management module:

 1from django.core import management
 2from apscheduler.schedulers.background import BackgroundScheduler
 3
 4def hourly_covid_refresh():
 5    management.call('refresh_covid')
 6
 7def start():
 8    scheduler = BackgroundScheduler()
 9    scheduler.add_job(hourly_covid_refresh, 'cron', minute='0', hour='*', day='*', week='*', month='*')
10    scheduler.start()