Cron jobs are meant to streamline simple, repetitive tasks. They are set up using django-cron (https://django-cron.readthedocs.io/en/latest/) as opposed to Vercel Functions to reduce costs warranted by extended compute usage.
The jobs are not automated yet, the next steps to automate cron jobs in this application involve exposing a secure API endpoint that an external server or service can utilize to trigger the cron job executions from the command line.
Navigate to the app home directory hemp-db
Run python manage.py runcrons. Specify --force if re-executing a cron job after edits were recently made to it. Django will cache the most recent execution so it is necessary to force the application to look for the updated script. (https://django-cron.readthedocs.io/en/latest/installation.html)
A cron job will show up successful with a [✔] and unsuccessful with a [✘]
(Text generated here originates from the file cron.py and the audit script audit.py)
Running Crons
========================================
Running cron: CronAudit code helloworld.CronAudit
Cron Audit Job Starting...
Audit Complete
[✔] helloworld.CronAudit
Running Crons
========================================
[✘] helloworld.CronAudit
The cron jobs use logging as a method to output text and track completions. The logging configuration is listed in settings.py under LOGGING. If a cron job is not executing and it is unable to provide a traceback:
hemp-db directory using python manage.py shellfrom django_cron.models import CronJobLog CronJobLog.objects.all() # grabs a history of all cron job executions
last = CronJobLog.objects.latest(‘started_at’) # to find the most recent failed job traceback print(last.message)
```
Execute the audit management command to generate a .csv file with database entries that are erroneous or old. More info in hemp-db/helloworld/management/commands/audit.py
Future goal to automatically email the .csv list to admins once the cron job is successful, and email an error message if the job should fail.