Django Background Task

If you're looking for a lightweight solution for just executing stuff in background rather than a full-blown task management system, take a look at django-utils. It includes, among other things, an @async function decorator that will make a function execute asynchronously in a separate thread.

Use it like this:

from djutils.decorators import async@asyncdef load_data_async():    # this will be executed in a separate thread    load_data()

Then you can call either the load_data_async function for background, or the normal load_data function for blocking execution.

Just make sure to install a version before 2.0, since that lacks the @async decorator.

Note: If even installing django-utils would be too much, you can simply download it and include the few required files in your project.

Celery.

Celery is an asynchronous task queue/job queue based on distributed message passing. It is focused on real-time operation, but supports scheduling as well.

Celery is written in Python, but the protocol can be implemented in any language. It can also operate with other languages using webhooks.

Just a quick update on John Lehmann's answer: django-background-task was unmaintained and incompatible with newer Django version. We updated and extended it with new features a while ago and maintaining the new backward compatible package on Github. The new django-background-tasks app can be downloaded or installed from the PyPI.