问题
I have written up a python script that allows a user to input a message, his email and the time and they would like the email sent. This is all stored in a mysql database.
However, how do I get the script to execute on the said time and date? will it require a cron job? I mean say at 2:15 on april 20th, the script will search the database for all times of 2:15, and send out those emails. But what about for emails at 2:16?
I am using a shared hosting provided, so cant have a continously running script.
Thanks
回答1:
If you cannot have a continuously running script, something must trigger it, so that would have to rely on your OS internals. In a unix environment a cron job, as you self state, would do the trick.
Set cron to run the script, and make the script wait for a given time and then continue running and sending until the next email is more than this given time away. Then make your script add a new cron job for a new wakeup time.
回答2:
Looks like this django application was made just for people in your situation...
http://code.google.com/p/django-cron/
Also, your design seems a little flawed. If its running at 2:15 you wouldn't want to send out just emails that should be sent at 2:15, but all ones that should have been sent in the past that have not been sent.
Your database should either: A. Delete the entries once they send or B. Have a column defined on your database table to store whether it was sent or not. Then your logic should make use of that column.
回答3:
A cronjob every minute or so would do it. If you're considering this, you might like to mind two things:
1 - How many e-mails are expected to be sent per minute? If it takes you 1 second to send an e-mail and you have 100 e-mails per minute, you won't finish your queue.
2 - What will happen if one job starts before the last one finishes? Be careful not to send e-mails twice. You need either to make sure first process ends (risk: you can drop an e-mail eventually), avoid next process to start (risk: first process hangs whole queue) or make them work in parallel (risk: synchronization problems).
If you take daramarak's suggestion - make you script add a new cron job at end - you have the risk of whole system colapsing if one error occurs.
来源：https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2732407/timed-email-reminder-in-python