How to add a component of randomness to a schedule

Question

I am trying to schedule a job to run every 3 minutes on average, with a component of randomness between +/- 30 seconds. So the next job runs anywhere between 2mins 30secs - 3mins 30secs later.

This code works nicely for exactly 3 minutes, but I can't think of a way to introduce the 30 secs of randomness:

import schedule
def job:
   print('hi')

schedule.every(3).minutes.do(job)

Answer 1

You need to look up the random module that comes with python.

import schedule
import random

def job():
   print('hi')

two_mins_30 = 2 * 60 + 30
schedule.every(two_mins_30 + random.randint(0, 60)).seconds.do(job)

This calculation is: two minutes, 30 plus up to another minute at random.

Update:

It turns out you can directly do this with schedule because the Job class has a to() method:

schedule.every(two_mins_30).to(two_mins_30 + 60).seconds.do(job)