Celery Tasks on Django Models

Question

I'm trying to learn how to use celery to check a date every day on one of my models. One of my models holds an expiration date and a boolean field that says whether their insurance is expired or not.

The model is pretty big so I'm going to post a condensed version. I think I have two options. Either run a celery task on the model method or rewrite the function in my tasks.py. Then I need to use Celery beat to run the schedule to check daily.

I've got the function to work, but I'm passing in the model objects directly which I think is wrong.

I'm also having trouble on how to use the args in the celery beat scheduler inside of my celery.py.

I'm really close to getting this to work, but I think I'm going about executing a task in the wrong way. and I think executing a task on the model method might be the cleanest, I'm just not sure how to accomplish that.

models.py

class CarrierCompany(models.Model):
    name = models.CharField(max_length=255, unique=True)
    insurance_expiration = models.DateTimeField(null=True)
    insurance_active = models.BooleanField()

    def insurance_expiration_check(self):
        if self.insurance_expiration > datetime.today().date():
            self.insurance_active = True
            self.save()
            print("Insurance Active")
        else:
            self.insurance_active = False
            self.save()
            print("Insurance Inactive")

tasks.py

from __future__ import absolute_import, unicode_literals
from celery.decorators import task
from datetime import datetime, date
from django.utils import timezone
from .models import CarrierCompany



@task(name="insurance_expired")
def insurance_date():
    carriers = CarrierCompany.objects.all()
    for carrier in carriers:
        date = datetime.now(timezone.utc)
        if carrier.insurance_expiration > date:
            carrier.insurance_active = True
            carrier.save()
            print("Insurance Active")
        else:
            carrier.insurance_active = False
            carrier.save()
            print("Insurance Inactive")

celery.py

from __future__ import absolute_import, unicode_literals
import os
from celery import Celery
from celery.schedules import crontab

os.environ.setdefault('DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE', 'config.settings.local')

app = Celery('POTRTMS')

app.config_from_object('django.conf:settings', namespace='CELERY')

app.autodiscover_tasks()


@app.task(bind=True)
def debug_task(self):
    print('Request: {0!r}'.format(self.request))


app.conf.beat_schedule = {
    'check-insurance-daily': {
        'task': 'insurance_expired',
        'schedule': crontab(hour='8')
    },
}

*** updated the beat schedule to reflect when I actually want to run it.

Answer 1

An example for how I might do it would be as follows. Also, instead of using traditional datetime, if you are including timezones in your Django App, you will probably want to use the timezone library instead found here.

models.py

class CarrierCompany(models.Model):
    ...

    @property
    def is_insurance_expired(self):
        from django.utils import timezone
        if self.insurance_expiration > timezone.datetime.today():
            print("Insurance Active")
            return True
        else:
            print("Insurance Active")
            return False

tasks.py

def insurance_date():
    carriers = CarrierCompany.objects.all()
    for carrier in carriers:
        if carrier.is_insurance_expired:
            carrier.insurance_active = True
            carrier.save()
        else:
            carrier.insurance_active = False
            carrier.save()

There are other things you could do, like not update it if its False and make the default False, or vice versa in the True case. You could also just do all of that in the models function, though I personally like to keep logic a bit separate (just how I organize my stuff). Hopefully this helps get you past where you are stuck though.