Celery v0.9.0 (unstable) documentation

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Configuration and defaults

This document describes the configuration options available.

If you’re using celery in a Django project these settings should be defined in your projects settings.py file.

In a regular Python environment using the default loader you must create the celeryconfig.py module and make sure it is available on the Python path.

Example configuration file

This is an example configuration file to get you started, it should contain all you need to run a basic celery set-up.

CELERY_BACKEND = "database"
DATABASE_ENGINE = "sqlite3"
DATABASE_NAME = "mydatabase.db"

BROKER_HOST = "localhost"
BROKER_PORT = 5672
BROKER_VHOST = "/"
BROKER_USER = "guest"
BROKER_PASSWORD = "guest"

## If you're doing mostly I/O you can have higher concurrency,
## if mostly spending time in the CPU, try to keep it close to the
## number of CPUs on your machine.
# CELERYD_CONCURRENCY = 8

CELERYD_LOG_FILE = "celeryd.log"
CELERYD_PID_FILE = "celeryd.pid"
CELERYD_DAEMON_LOG_LEVEL = "INFO"

Concurrency settings

  • CELERYD_CONCURRENCY

    The number of concurrent worker processes, executing tasks simultaneously.

    Defaults to the number of CPUs in the system.

Task result backend settings

  • CELERY_BACKEND

    The backend used to store task results (tombstones). Can be one of the following:

    • database (default)

      Use a relational database supported by the Django ORM.

    • cache

      Use memcached to store the results.

    • mongodb

      Use MongoDB to store the results.

    • pyredis

      Use Redis to store the results.

    • tyrant

      Use Tokyo Tyrant to store the results.

    • amqp

      Send results back as AMQP messages (WARNING While very fast, you must make sure you only try to receive the result once).

Database backend settings

Please see the Django ORM database settings documentation: http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/ref/settings/#database-engine

If you use this backend make sure to initialize the database tables after configuration. When using celery with a Django project this means executing:

$ python manage.py syncdb

When using celery in a regular Python environment you have to execute:

$ celeryinit

Example configuration

CELERY_BACKEND = "database"
DATABASE_ENGINE = "mysql"
DATABASE_USER = "myusername"
DATABASE_PASSWORD = "mypassword"
DATABASE_NAME = "mydatabase"
DATABASE_HOST = "localhost"

Cache backend settings

Please see the documentation for the Django cache framework settings: http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/topics/cache/#memcached

To use a custom cache backend for Celery, while using another for Django, you should use the CELERY_CACHE_BACKEND setting instead of the regular django CACHE_BACKEND setting.

Example configuration

Using a single memcached server:

CACHE_BACKEND = 'memcached://127.0.0.1:11211/'

Using multiple memcached servers:

CELERY_BACKEND = "cache"
CACHE_BACKEND = 'memcached://172.19.26.240:11211;172.19.26.242:11211/'

Tokyo Tyrant backend settings

NOTE The Tokyo Tyrant backend requires the pytyrant library:
http://pypi.python.org/pypi/pytyrant/

This backend requires the following configuration directives to be set:

  • TT_HOST

    Hostname of the Tokyo Tyrant server.

  • TT_PORT

    The port the Tokyo Tyrant server is listening to.

Example configuration

CELERY_BACKEND = "tyrant"
TT_HOST = "localhost"
TT_PORT = 1978

Redis backend settings

NOTE The Redis backend requires the redis library:
http://pypi.python.org/pypi/redis/0.5.5

To install the redis package use pip or easy_install:

$ pip install redis

This backend requires the following configuration directives to be set:

  • REDIS_HOST

    Hostname of the Redis database server. e.g. "localhost".

  • REDIS_PORT

    Port to the Redis database server. e.g. 6379.

Also, the following optional configuration directives are available:

  • REDIS_DB

    Name of the database to use. Default is celery_results.

  • REDIS_TIMEOUT

    Timeout in seconds before we give up establishing a connection to the Redis server.

  • REDIS_CONNECT_RETRY

    Retry connecting if an connection could not be established. Default is false.

Example configuration

CELERY_BACKEND = "pyredis"
REDIS_HOST = "localhost"
REDIS_PORT = 6739
REDIS_DATABASE = "celery_results"
REDIS_CONNECT_RETRY=True

MongoDB backend settings

NOTE The MongoDB backend requires the pymongo library:
http://github.com/mongodb/mongo-python-driver/tree/master
  • CELERY_MONGODB_BACKEND_SETTINGS

    This is a dict supporting the following keys:

    • host

      Hostname of the MongoDB server. Defaults to “localhost”.

    • port

      The port the MongoDB server is listening to. Defaults to 27017.

    • user

      Username to authenticate to the MongoDB server as (optional).

    • password

      Password to authenticate to the MongoDB server (optional).

    • database

      The database name to connect to. Defaults to “celery”.

    • taskmeta_collection

      The collection name to store task metadata. Defaults to “celery_taskmeta”.

Example configuration

CELERY_BACKEND = "mongodb"
CELERY_MONGODB_BACKEND_SETTINGS = {
    "host": "192.168.1.100",
    "port": 30000,
    "database": "mydb",
    "taskmeta_collection": "my_taskmeta_collection",
}

Broker settings

  • CELERY_AMQP_EXCHANGE

    Name of the AMQP exchange.

  • CELERY_AMQP_EXCHANGE_TYPE

    The type of exchange. If the exchange type is direct, all messages receives all tasks. However, if the exchange type is topic, you can route e.g. some tasks to one server, and others to the rest. See Exchange types and the effect of bindings.

  • CELERY_AMQP_PUBLISHER_ROUTING_KEY

    The default AMQP routing key used when publishing tasks.

  • CELERY_AMQP_CONSUMER_ROUTING_KEY

    The AMQP routing key used when consuming tasks.

  • CELERY_AMQP_CONSUMER_QUEUE

    The name of the AMQP queue.

  • CELERY_AMQP_CONSUMER_QUEUES

    Dictionary defining multiple AMQP queues.

  • CELERY_AMQP_CONNECTION_TIMEOUT

    The timeout in seconds before we give up establishing a connection to the AMQP server. Default is 4 seconds.

  • CELERY_AMQP_CONNECTION_RETRY

    Automatically try to re-establish the connection to the AMQP broker if it’s lost.

    The time between retries is increased for each retry, and is not exhausted before CELERY_AMQP_CONNECTION_MAX_RETRIES is exceeded.

    This behaviour is on by default.

  • CELERY_AMQP_CONNECTION_MAX_RETRIES

    Maximum number of retries before we give up re-establishing a connection to the AMQP broker.

    If this is set to 0 or None, we will retry forever.

    Default is 100 retries.

Task execution settings

  • SEND_CELERY_TASK_ERROR_EMAILS

    If set to True, errors in tasks will be sent to admins by e-mail. If unset, it will send the e-mails if settings.DEBUG is False.

  • CELERY_ALWAYS_EAGER

    If this is True, all tasks will be executed locally by blocking until it is finished. apply_async and Task.delay will return a celery.result.EagerResult which emulates the behaviour of celery.result.AsyncResult, except the result has already been evaluated.

    Tasks will never be sent to the queue, but executed locally instead.

  • CELERY_TASK_RESULT_EXPIRES

    Time (in seconds, or a datetime.timedelta object) for when after stored task tombstones are deleted.

    NOTE: For the moment this only works for the database and MongoDB backends., except the result has already been evaluated.

  • CELERY_TASK_SERIALIZER

    A string identifying the default serialization method to use. Can be pickle (default), json, yaml, or any custom serialization methods that have been registered with carrot.serialization.registry.

    Default is pickle.

Logging settings

  • CELERYD_LOG_FILE

    The default filename the worker daemon logs messages to, can be overridden using the –logfile` option to celeryd.

    The default is to log using stderr if running in the foreground, when running in the background, detached as a daemon, the default logfile is celeryd.log.

  • CELERYD_DAEMON_LOG_LEVEL

    Worker log level, can be any of DEBUG, INFO, WARNING, ERROR, CRITICAL, or FATAL.

    See the logging module for more information.

  • CELERYD_DAEMON_LOG_FORMAT

    The format to use for log messages. Can be overridden using the --loglevel option to celeryd.

    Default is [%(asctime)s: %(levelname)s/%(processName)s] %(message)s

    See the Python logging module for more information about log formats.

Process settings

  • CELERYD_PID_FILE

    Full path to the daemon pid file. Default is celeryd.pid. Can be overridden using the --pidfile option to celeryd.