z4j-celerybeat

The Celery Beat scheduler adapter for z4j.

Surfaces periodic / crontab / one-shot Celery schedules on the dashboard's Schedules page. Database-backed django_celery_beat.models.PeriodicTask supports native writes; Celery's static app.conf.beat_schedule is read-only.

Native writes and source confirmation need the z4j server, z4j-core, z4j-bare and z4j-celerybeat from the same release, plus the Beat producer setup described under Install.

Compatibility

• Celery 5.3+ (no upper cap)
• django-celery-beat 2.5+ (for the writable backend)
• Python 3.11+

Full per-adapter matrix at https://docs.z4j.com/reference/compatibility/.

What it ships

Capability	Notes
List schedules	from both static config and django-celery-beat
Read individual schedule	by id
Create schedule	django-celery-beat backend (static is read-only)
Update	interval / crontab / args / kwargs / enabled flag
Enable / disable	via the PeriodicTask.enabled field
Trigger now	fires the underlying task immediately, outside the schedule
Delete	django-celery-beat backend
Live sync	in-process django-celery-beat saves/deletes are reported best-effort through Django signals; periodic snapshots reconcile the source
Boot inventory	full snapshot at agent connect; existing schedules show up without editing

Static beat_schedule is read-only by design, you can view and trigger, but create / update / delete / enable / disable all need django-celery-beat (or a source-code edit and deploy round-trip). The dashboard hides buttons it can't honor.

Install

pip install z4j-django z4j-celery 'z4j-celerybeat[django]'

With django-celery-beat (most Django projects)

# settings.py
INSTALLED_APPS = [
    # ...
    "django_celery_beat",
    "z4j_django",
]

Start a long-lived celery beat process with --scheduler django_celery_beat.schedulers:DatabaseScheduler, the same Django settings and Z4J_* credentials. The Celery worker bootstrap alone registers the engine, not a Beat scheduler. Run only one Beat instance for a given schedule database unless you provide an upstream leader-election solution.

After the scheduler agent connects, its inventory snapshot includes existing PeriodicTask rows. Dashboard changes write through to the database. Saves and deletes in a process where the adapter's hooks are connected are reported best-effort through Django signals; later inventory snapshots reconcile the database source as well.

With static beat_schedule (plain Celery)

import os

from celery import Celery
from z4j_bare import install_agent
from z4j_celery import CeleryEngineAdapter
from z4j_celerybeat import CeleryBeatSchedulerAdapter

app = Celery("myproject", broker="redis://localhost")
app.conf.beat_schedule = {
    "cleanup-every-5-minutes": {
        "task": "myapp.tasks.cleanup",
        "schedule": 300.0,
    },
}

install_agent(
    engines=[CeleryEngineAdapter(celery_app=app)],
    schedulers=[CeleryBeatSchedulerAdapter(celery_app=app)],
    brain_url="https://brain.example.com",
    token="z4j_agent_...",
    project_id="my-project",
    hmac_secret=os.environ["Z4J_HMAC_SECRET"],
)

Native changes return an accepted operation first; the dashboard reports completion after a full source snapshot confirms the result. A timeout or uncertain result requires checking the native row before issuing a new request. Clocked schedules are one-shot and require an offset-aware timestamp. Solar schedules retain their coordinates; the common dashboard form does not create solar definitions. See the guide for supported fields and source identities.

Pairs with

• z4j-celery, engine adapter

Reliability

• Direct application writes to PeriodicTask keep normal Django ORM semantics; reporting their post-save/post-delete signals to z4j is best-effort and does not roll back those writes.
• Dashboard controls execute in the agent process through the Django ORM. A database mutation that exceeds its 15-second timeout is reported as indeterminate because its worker thread may still commit it.

Documentation

Full docs at docs.z4j.com/schedulers/celery-beat/.

License

Apache-2.0, see LICENSE.

Links

• Homepage: https://z4j.com
• Documentation: https://docs.z4j.com
• PyPI: https://pypi.org/project/z4j-celerybeat/
• Issues: https://github.com/z4jdev/z4j-celerybeat/issues
• Changelog: CHANGELOG.md
• Security: security@z4j.com (see SECURITY.md)