Background Tasks with Celery¶

Version: Arctyk ITSM v0.6.0+
Last Updated: 2025

This page documents how Celery is used for asynchronous task processing in Arctyk ITSM.

Overview¶

Celery handles background tasks that shouldn't block HTTP requests:

Email notifications
Report generation
Scheduled tasks
External API calls
Bulk operations

Configuration¶

Celery Setup¶

# config/celery.py
from celery import Celery

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

Settings¶

# settings.py
CELERY_BROKER_URL = 'redis://localhost:6379/0'
CELERY_RESULT_BACKEND = 'redis://localhost:6379/0'
CELERY_ACCEPT_CONTENT = ['json']
CELERY_TASK_SERIALIZER = 'json'
CELERY_RESULT_SERIALIZER = 'json'
CELERY_TIMEZONE = 'UTC'

Task Examples¶

Email Notification Task¶

# tickets/tasks.py
from celery import shared_task
from django.core.mail import send_mail

@shared_task(bind=True, max_retries=3)
def send_ticket_notification(self, ticket_id, action):
    """Send email when ticket is created/updated."""
    try:
        ticket = Ticket.objects.get(id=ticket_id)

        send_mail(
            subject=f'Ticket #{ticket.id}: {action}',
            message=f'Ticket {ticket.title} was {action}',
            from_email='noreply@arctyk.dev',
            recipient_list=[ticket.assignee.email],
        )
    except Exception as exc:
        # Retry with exponential backoff
        raise self.retry(exc=exc, countdown=60 * (2 ** self.request.retries))

Scheduled Report Task¶

@shared_task
def generate_daily_report():
    """Generate and email daily ticket report."""
    tickets = Ticket.objects.filter(created_at__date=date.today())

    # Generate PDF report
    pdf = generate_pdf_report(tickets)

    # Email to managers
    send_mail(
        subject='Daily Ticket Report',
        message='See attached report',
        from_email='reports@arctyk.dev',
        recipient_list=['manager@example.com'],
        attachments=[('report.pdf', pdf, 'application/pdf')],
    )

Calling Tasks¶

Async (Non-blocking)¶

# Queue task for execution
send_ticket_notification.delay(ticket.id, 'created')

ETA (Scheduled)¶

from datetime import timedelta

# Run in 1 hour
send_ticket_notification.apply_async(
    args=[ticket.id, 'reminder'],
    eta=datetime.now() + timedelta(hours=1)
)

Retry on Failure¶

@shared_task(bind=True, max_retries=3, default_retry_delay=60)
def unreliable_task(self):
    try:
        # Task logic
        pass
    except Exception as exc:
        raise self.retry(exc=exc)

Periodic Tasks¶

Celery Beat¶

Schedule tasks to run periodically:

# config/celery.py
from celery.schedules import crontab

app.conf.beat_schedule = {
    'daily-report': {
        'task': 'tickets.tasks.generate_daily_report',
        'schedule': crontab(hour=8, minute=0),  # 8 AM daily
    },
    'cleanup-old-sessions': {
        'task': 'core.tasks.cleanup_sessions',
        'schedule': crontab(hour=2, minute=0),  # 2 AM daily
    },
}

Starting Celery Beat¶

celery -A config beat -l info

Monitoring¶

Flower¶

Web-based monitoring tool:

# Install
pip install flower

# Run
celery -A config flower

Access at http://localhost:5555

Task States¶

PENDING - Task waiting to be picked up
STARTED - Task execution has begun
SUCCESS - Task completed successfully
FAILURE - Task failed
RETRY - Task is being retried

Best Practices¶

Keep tasks idempotent - Safe to run multiple times
Set timeouts - Prevent tasks from running forever
Use retries - Handle transient failures
Monitor task queue - Prevent backlog
Log appropriately - Debug failed tasks

Running Celery¶

Development¶

# Worker
celery -A config worker -l info

# Beat (scheduler)
celery -A config beat -l info

Production¶

# Worker with concurrency
celery -A config worker -l info --concurrency=4

# Daemonize with systemd
systemctl start celery celerybeat