Distributed Task Queue
Project description
- Version:
1.0.5
- Web:
- Download:
- Source:
- Keywords:
task queue, job queue, asynchronous, rabbitmq, amqp, redis, django, python, webhooks, queue, distributed
–
Celery is a task queue/job queue based on distributed message passing. It is focused on real-time operation, but supports scheduling as well.
The execution units, called tasks, are executed concurrently on a single or more worker servers. Tasks can execute asynchronously (in the background) or synchronously (wait until ready).
Celery is already used in production to process millions of tasks a day.
Celery was originally created for use with Django, but is now usable from any Python project. It can also operate with other languages via webhooks.
The recommended message broker is RabbitMQ, but support for Redis and databases is also available.
Overview
This is a high level overview of the architecture.
The broker pushes tasks to the worker servers. A worker server is a networked machine running celeryd. This can be one or more machines, depending on the workload.
The result of the task can be stored for later retrieval (called its “tombstone”).
Example
You probably want to see some code by now, so here’s an example task adding two numbers:
from celery.decorators import task
@task
def add(x, y):
return x + y
You can execute the task in the background, or wait for it to finish:
>>> result = add.delay(4, 4) >>> result.wait() # wait for and return the result 8
Simple!
Features
Messaging
Supported brokers include RabbitMQ, Stomp, Redis, and most common SQL databases.
Robust
Using RabbitMQ, celery survives most error scenarios, and your tasks will never be lost.
Distributed
Runs on one or more machines. Supports clustering when used in combination with RabbitMQ. You can set up new workers without central configuration (e.g. use your dads laptop while the queue is temporarily overloaded).
Concurrency
Tasks are executed in parallel using the multiprocessing module.
Scheduling
Supports recurring tasks like cron, or specifying an exact date or countdown for when after the task should be executed.
Performance
Able to execute tasks while the user waits.
Return Values
Task return values can be saved to the selected result store backend. You can wait for the result, retrieve it later, or ignore it.
Result Stores
Database, MongoDB, Redis, Tokyo Tyrant, AMQP (high performance).
Webhooks
Your tasks can also be HTTP callbacks, enabling cross-language communication.
Rate limiting
Supports rate limiting by using the token bucket algorithm, which accounts for bursts of traffic. Rate limits can be set for each task type, or globally for all.
Routing
Using AMQP you can route tasks arbitrarily to different workers.
Remote-control
You can rate limit and delete (revoke) tasks remotely.
Monitoring
You can capture everything happening with the workers in real-time by subscribing to events. A real-time web monitor is in development.
Serialization
Supports Pickle, JSON, YAML, or easily defined custom schemes. One task invocation can have a different scheme than another.
Tracebacks
Errors and tracebacks are stored and can be investigated after the fact.
UUID
Every task has an UUID (Universally Unique Identifier), which is the task id used to query task status and return value.
Retries
Tasks can be retried if they fail, with configurable maximum number of retries, and delays between each retry.
Task Sets
A Task set is a task consisting of several sub-tasks. You can find out how many, or if all of the sub-tasks has been executed, and even retrieve the results in order. Progress bars, anyone?
Made for Web
You can query status and results via URLs, enabling the ability to poll task status using Ajax.
Error e-mails
Can be configured to send e-mails to the administrators when tasks fails.
Supervised
Pool workers are supervised and automatically replaced if they crash.
Documentation
The latest documentation with user guides, tutorials and API reference is hosted at Github.
Installation
You can install celery either via the Python Package Index (PyPI) or from source.
To install using pip,:
$ pip install celery
To install using easy_install,:
$ easy_install celery
Downloading and installing from source
Download the latest version of celery from http://pypi.python.org/pypi/celery/
You can install it by doing the following,:
$ tar xvfz celery-0.0.0.tar.gz $ cd celery-0.0.0 $ python setup.py build # python setup.py install # as root
Using the development version
You can clone the repository by doing the following:
$ git clone git://github.com/ask/celery.git
Getting Help
Mailing list
For discussions about the usage, development, and future of celery, please join the celery-users mailing list.
IRC
Come chat with us on IRC. The #celery channel is located at the Freenode network.
Bug tracker
If you have any suggestions, bug reports or annoyances please report them to our issue tracker at http://github.com/ask/celery/issues/
Wiki
Contributing
Development of celery happens at Github: http://github.com/ask/celery
You are highly encouraged to participate in the development of celery. If you don’t like Github (for some reason) you’re welcome to send regular patches.
License
This software is licensed under the New BSD License. See the LICENSE file in the top distribution directory for the full license text.
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