Implementing Scheduled Tasks in Django with django‑crontab and APScheduler

When building a Django application, you may need to execute tasks at regular intervals; this guide surveys two common approaches.

1. django‑crontab plugin

Install the package with pip install django-crontab. Add 'django_crontab' to INSTALLED_APPS in settings.py and define the cron jobs, for example:

CRONJOBS = [
    ('*/1 * * * *', 'crontab_test.mycron.my_cron', '>> ' + os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'info.log') + ' 2>&1')
]

Use the management commands to control the jobs: python manage.py crontab add – write jobs to the system crontab python manage.py crontab remove – delete the jobs python manage.py crontab show – list current jobs

Note: this method relies on the Linux crontab utility.

2. APScheduler

Install with pip install apscheduler and add 'django_apscheduler' to INSTALLED_APPS. After running python manage.py migrate, you can define and start schedulers in your code. A typical start command is: sched.start() This approach works cross‑platform and does not depend on the system crontab.