SteadyCron Python SDK

steadycron is the official Python code-monitoring SDK for SteadyCron.

Wrap your scheduled jobs with @steadycron.job and SteadyCron will:

• Know when a job started, succeeded, or failed
• Alert you when a job doesn't run on time (missed heartbeat)
• Detect stuck runs that start but never finish

The monitor must already exist — create it in the Dashboard, via YAML manifest, or Terraform. The SDK never creates monitors. For a fully code-driven workflow, declare the monitor in your Terraform configuration or YAML manifest and reference it from your application by key: the cron schedule, alert rules, and SDK instrumentation all live in the same repository.

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Installation

pip install steadycron

No runtime dependencies — uses Python's standard library only.

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Quick start

import steadycron

steadycron.api_key = "sc_ro_..."  # read-only key; or set STEADYCRON_API_KEY env var

@steadycron.job("nightly-db-backup")
def backup():
    run_backup()   # start on entry, success on return, fail (+re-raise) on exception

Context manager

with steadycron.monitor("nightly-db-backup"):
    run_backup()

Manual pings

m = steadycron.Monitor("nightly-db-backup")
m.ping()                           # bare success heartbeat
m.ping(state="start")
m.ping(state="fail", message="disk full")

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Authentication

The SDK uses a read-only API key to resolve monitor keys to ping tokens at startup. Create one in:

SteadyCron Dashboard → Settings → API keys → New key → Scope: Read-only

Set it via:

• Environment variable: STEADYCRON_API_KEY=sc_ro_...
• Module attribute: steadycron.api_key = "sc_ro_..."
• steadycron.configure(api_key="sc_ro_...")

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Configuration

import steadycron

steadycron.configure(
    api_key="sc_ro_...",
    environment="production",   # optional — sent on every ping
    capture_errors=True,        # include exception message on fail pings (default False)
    ping_timeout=5.0,           # seconds (default 5)
    resolve_cache_ttl=3600.0,   # seconds (default 3600 = 1 hour)
)

Setting	Default	Env var fallback
api_key	None	STEADYCRON_API_KEY
api_url	https://api.steadycron.com	STEADYCRON_API_URL
ping_url	https://ping.steadycron.com	STEADYCRON_PING_URL
environment	None	STEADYCRON_ENVIRONMENT
capture_errors	False	—
ping_timeout	5.0 s	—
resolve_cache_ttl	3600.0 s	—

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How it works

1. On first use, the SDK calls GET /api/monitors/resolve?key=<your-key> with the read-only API key to retrieve the ping token. The token is cached for 1 hour (configurable).
2. All pings are fire-and-forget: a bounded ping_timeout is applied; any error is logged via logging.getLogger("steadycron") at WARNING and discarded. They never raise.
3. Resolution errors (404 unknown key, 409 ambiguous key, wrong kind) raise immediately — they indicate misconfiguration.
4. On exception, a fail ping is sent and the original exception is re-raised unchanged.

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Direct / token mode (hardened path)

If you cannot use API key resolution (e.g. air-gapped environments), set the ping token directly:

steadycron.monitors = {"nightly-db-backup": "hRkmWz8oZtlMFzvTAUdnRE"}

The token is visible via Job detail → Code monitoring → Reveal ping token in the Dashboard.

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Reliability contract

• Ping failures are never raised. A transport error, timeout, or non-2xx response is logged and discarded.
• Resolution errors always raise. A 404 or 409 from the resolve endpoint raises on first use; fix the key or remove the decorator.
• Original exceptions pass through unchanged. The decorator and context manager do not wrap exceptions.
• No runtime dependencies. The SDK uses urllib.request from the standard library.

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License

MIT