Calling a django function periodically - django

Question

This is a rookie question on web development. I am trying to find a secure and better way for developers to call and run a function that sends emails out from my django application that they can override and send manually as well as also can be time activated thus sending the email periodically at fixed times of the week.
I found answer suggesting the use of celery on Running a function periodically in Django
But I want to change the periods without redeploying my application. I have done some research on aws tools and I think a combination of AWS gateway and aws lambda and aws cloudwatch to send a url/endpoint (or get request) to my web app to activate the function.
At the moment I have something like below.
views.py
def api_send_email(request):
#insert send email function
print ("sending")
return redirect('/')
urls.py
urlpatterns = [
url(r'^send_email$', api_send_email, name="api_send_email"),
]
So the above can either manually be triggered by going to the url https//xxx/send_email or by is sending a get request to that url periodically from aws. I have thought about doing a post request instead which will make it more secure but I am not sure if the aws tools can do that because it requires the csrf token in my app itself.
Any suggestions on what is the best way to be doing this is welcome.
Thank you

Answer 1

I think you can accomplish this with celery as well. For that, you can add a periodic task. Lets say you have a periodic task which initiates every 5 minutes.
Then you can have your logic in a Model to determine if it should be sent the email at that time. For example:
class YourTaskConfig(models.Model):
SEND_CHOICES = (
('minute': 'minute'),
('hour': 'hour'),
('day': 'day'),
)
send_every = models.CharField(max_length=25, choices=SEND_CHOICES)
interval_amount = models.IntegerField()
last_executed = models.DateTimeField(auto_add_now=True)
is_active = models.BooleanField(default=True)
def should_run(self):
now = timezone.now()
if self.send_every == 'minute':
td = datetime.timedelta(seconds=self.interval_amount*60)
elif self.send_every == 'day':
td = datetime.timedelta(days=self.interval_amount)
... # rest of the logic on time delta
if now - self.last_executed >= td:
self.save() # Updates current execution time
return True
return False
Your Email model can have a FK to this configuration(if you have one):
class Email(models):
config = models.ForeignKey(YourTaskConfig, on_delete=models.DO_NOTHING)
And use it periodic task:
from celery.task.schedules import crontab
from celery.decorators import periodic_task
#periodic_task(run_every=(crontab(minute='*/5')), name="some_task", ignore_result=True) # Runs every 5 minute
def some_task():
for i in YourTaskConfig.objects.filter(is_active=True): # run only active tasks
should_send_email = i.should_run()
if should_send_email:
i.email_set.all() # Here you go, you have your emails which you want send
FYI: Its an untested code, but you can get the general idea behind this solution. Hope it helps!!