asynchronous timer events - how to?

[Fredrik Lundh]

Helmut Jarausch wrote:

> I'm using a web server (Karrigell) which is based on the asyncore module.
> I'd like to be able to checkpoint some data (e.g. pickled dictionaries) to disk
> from time to time.
> For that I would need to setup a timer which calls a Python object/function when 
> its time interval has expired. While this function is running I need access to 
> the variables of the server.

the usual way to do that with asyncore is to add an outer control loop 
that calls asyncore.loop with a count argument (or poll directly), and 
checks a "task queue" at regular intervals.

but in your case, it's probably easier to set up a cron job that does
a "wget" against your server with a "secret" URL, and have the server do 
the checkpointing whenever that URL is fetched.

</F>