[SOLVED] python schedule jobs with different timezones

Issue

I want to schedule a python function to run everyday at a certain time for a list of customers with different timezones.

This is basically what I want to do:

import schedule
import time

def job(text):
    print("Hello " + text)

def add_job(user_tz, time, text):
    schedule.every().day.at(time).do(job(text)) 
    # the above adds all jobs at local time, I want to use different timezones with these

def run_job():
    while(1):
        schedule.run_pending()
        time.sleep(1)

if __name__=='__main__':
    add_job('America/New_York', "12:00", 'New York')
    add_job('Europe/London', "12:00", 'London')
    run_job()

I am using this for posting/receiving some stuff using flask and an external API.

Celery or heroku scheduler or something heavy is not what I am looking for, something lightweight and pythonic for debian(or nix) env would be ideal. I have looked into scheduler, tzcron and APScheduler, but could not figure out how we would be able to use them with timezones.

Also I tried using crontab but could not figure out how to add jobs at run time, since I want to be able to add/remove jobs using the above mentioned functions at runtime as well.

I have some experience with python, but its my first problem with timezones and I dont know much about this, so please feel free to enlighten me if there is something I missed or if there is any other way of doing it.

Thanks!

Solution

The arrow library is great for this, and much simpler than the standard date/time (imo). arrow docs.

import arrow
from datetime import datetime

now = datetime.now()
atime = arrow.get(now)
print(now)
print (atime)

eastern = atime.to('US/Eastern')
print (eastern)
print (eastern.datetime)

2017-11-17 09:53:58.700546
2017-11-17T09:53:58.700546+00:00
2017-11-17T04:53:58.700546-05:00
2017-11-17 04:53:58.700546-05:00

I would change your "add_job" method modify all of my incoming dates to a standard time zone (utc for example).

Answered By - SteveJ

Answer Checked By - Mary Flores (WPSolving Volunteer)