Installation

1. Install django_cron (ideally in your virtualenv!) using pip or simply getting a copy of the code and putting it in a directory in your codebase.
2. Add django_cron to your Django settings INSTALLED_APPS:

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    # ...
    "django_cron",
]

3. Run python manage.py migrate django_cron
4. Write a cron class somewhere in your code, that extends the CronJobBase class. This class will look something like this:

from django_cron import CronJobBase, Schedule

class MyCronJob(CronJobBase):
    RUN_EVERY_MINS = 120 # every 2 hours

    schedule = Schedule(run_every_mins=RUN_EVERY_MINS)
    code = 'my_app.my_cron_job'    # a unique code

    def do(self):
        pass    # do your thing here

5. Add a variable called CRON_CLASSES (similar to MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES etc.) thats a list of strings, each being a cron class. Eg.:

CRON_CLASSES = [
    "my_app.cron.MyCronJob",
    # ...
]

6. Now everytime you run the management command python manage.py runcrons all the crons will run if required. Depending on the application the management command can be called from the Unix crontab as often as required. Every 5 minutes usually works for most of my applications, for example:

> crontab -e
*/5 * * * * source /home/ubuntu/.bashrc && source /home/ubuntu/work/your-project/bin/activate && python /home/ubuntu/work/your-project/src/manage.py runcrons > /home/ubuntu/cronjob.log