A guide for implementing celery, using django web framework.

run this project for code explaination.

Prerequisites: python, django project setup

Installation & Management:

To install celery - pip install Celery

To manage celery - celery -A <PROJECT NAME> worker -l info

To install rabbitmq -

Since rabbitmq is written in erlang programming language, we need ‘erlang’ first

apt-get install -y erlang

apt-get install rabbitmq-server

systemctl is used to examine and control the state of “systemd” system and service manager.

systemd is system and service manager for Unix like operating systems

To manage rabbitmq - We need systemctl

systemctl enable rabbitmq-server

systemctl start rabbitmq-server

Extra Setups:

STEP 1 Create a celery.py file alongside settings.py for project celery.py:

import os
from celery import Celery

os.environ.setdefault('DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE', 'mysite.settings')

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

Here we’re specifying celery to look in into settings.py of project mysite, with namespace ‘CELERY’ (i.e. every settings prefixed with CELERY_ is for celery usage)

STEP 2 We need to add celery in __init__.py, To load celery settings every time django starts. init.py:

from .celery import app as celery_app

__all__ = ['celery_app']

STEP 3 In order to monitor task progress, we need to have a backend to store task results. Using django backend itself is optimal for small projects.

To install django_celery_results - pip install django_celery_results

To manage django_celery_results -

In settings.py add ‘django_celery_results’ to INSTALLED APPS

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    #other apps
    'django_celery_results'
]

Also add the following configurations at the end of the file

CELERY_BROKER_URL = 'amqp://localhost'
CELERY_RESULT_BACKEND = 'django-db'
CELERY_ACCEPT_CONTENT = ['json']
CELERY_TASK_SERIALIZER = 'json'
CELERY_RESULT_SERIALIZER = 'json'

• BROKER_URL is the address of our message broker, which will manage task messages.
• RESULT_BACKEND is the database for storing task results and status.
• ACCEPT_CONTENT is the list of allowed formats for storing results.
• TASK_SERIALIZER and RESULT_SERIALIZER specify the formats to which values will be parsed in order to interact with our message broker.

Note: we need to run rabbitmq before celery, celery will always look for a message broker on start.

Steps to start servers:

Once every thing setup as mentioned above

• Start Rabbitmq server

systemctl start rabbitmq-server
systemctl status rabbitmq-server

• Start Celery worker celery -A <PROJECT NAME> worker -l info
• Start Flower (optional for real time monitoring) celery -A <PROJECT NAME> flower