Thread that executes a task every N seconds - sample implementation

[Itamar S.-T.]

Hi,

When developing a threaded program I found a common
pattern is a thread that does something every N
seconds. For example, record all logged in users once
a minute. Now, when we shutdown this thread we want it
to stop immediatly if it's sleeping, or finish
whatever its doing and then stop if it's not sleeping.
The following class does this, and saves you the work
of writing the same code over and over.

Suggestions for alternate implementations are welcome.

An example of using the class:
====================================

class Demo(TaskThread):
    """Say 'hello' once a minute"""

    def __init__(self):
        TaskThread.__init__(self)
        self.setInterval(60)

    def task(self):
        """This will be executed every 60 seconds"""
        print "hello"

t = Demo()
t.start()

# do other stufff, lalalalala
t.shutdown() # stop Demo thread


=====
Itamar Shtull-Trauring, itamar(at)shtull-trauring.org

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