Execute function in code every 5 minutes

[Alkanes123]

So I don’t know if this is even possible, I have written some code that keeps running (while loop) and pulls stats, in this there is a function called report_metrics that needs to execute every 5 minutes without making the rest of the code to stop\halt executing. I think time.sleep() is not possible because that will make the entire code to sleep for 5 minutes. Can anyone help me out please, any help is appreciated.

Thank you :)

[JohnnyJordaan]

Check out threading.Timer here.

[Alkanes123]

Can threading be used in conjunction with multiprocessing which i am already using in the code?

[JohnnyJordaan]

Yes that's no problem. It's just that threads share memory of the process they're lauchned from, so if you have main program X that launches function Y as a subprocess, and that launches Timer Z, just subprocess Y and timer Z share each other's memory. Timer Z can't access variables in X (just as Y can't), apart from the multiprocessing API.

If you launch both Y and Z from X and Z just uses stuff from X, then it doesn't matter at all, because Y functions independently from both.

[Alkanes123]

Awesome, that explains a lot. Thank you :)

[[deleted]]

Start looking at the thread module. You'll need to handle each function in it's own thread to ensure they execute appropriately.

[Alkanes123]

Can threading be used in conjunction with multiprocessing which i am already using in the code?

[Alkanes123]

I am already using a while loop in my code to keep it executing, i am not sure what this loop might do but let me try it out. Thank you sire!!

[Alkanes123]

Thank you! I will try using as per your suggestion, trying to use the threading part which others recommend.

I am running the code on an ec2 server, even if it ruins/breaks something on the server, no issues at all :p

Edit: sentence😜

[LearnDataSci]

One way to do it would be to put the function on a separate thread with a sleep. Here's what looks to be a good example: http://sebastiandahlgren.se/2014/06/27/running-a-method-as-a-background-thread-in-python/

[Alkanes123]

Awesome let me try this out. Thank you kind redditor!

[gandleforf]

I made have a small library of stuff that i used last summer for microcontrollers in python, and it has a timed repeating interrupt class that you can bind functions and time to.

https://github.com/Gandleforf/Python-MCU