period time triggers with now and endtime

[DivusJulius]

I want to use a period time trigger that starts at definition time and ends at a specified time but the function still triggers even after the time has passed.

@time_trigger("period(now, 1min, 10:15:00)") 

When I specify a specific time as the start time it works.

@time_trigger("period(10:00:00, 1min, 10:15:00)") 

It also works when the end time includes the date

@time_trigger("period(now, 1min, 2025/04/08 10:22:00)") 

This might be a bug but I wanted to ask here first just in case I am doing something wrong.

This is the function I used to test this.

@time_trigger("period(now, 1min, 10:15:00)") 
def period_trigger_test(trigger_time: datetime):
    task.unique("period_trigger_test")
    log.warning("trigger_time %s", trigger_time)

[craigbarratt]

You're not doing anything wrong. I don't think it's a bug, but an unexpected consequence of how pyscript interprets times without dates. When a date isn't specified, several checks are done by trying yesterday, today and tomorrow. This is to allow the convenience of a start time > end time (without dates) to mean the evening period spanning midnight - the ending time is considered to be tomorrow. If now > end time, the end time is considered to be tomorrow. A couple of solutions are (untested):

• don't use now, instead use '0:0' or midnight. Then the trigger will happen from midnight to 10:15am every day, or from whenever you start. However, you might only want to trigger on the start day, not on subsequent days.
• To trigger just on a startup day, keep the now start, and today 10:15:00 for the end time. That should disable the attempts to try tomorrow or yesterday. Then the trigger will only happen on the day of startup before 10:15am.

Hmm - I just tested the 2nd suggestion, and it doesn't work correctly - it triggers once at now, even if it's after end time. It doesn't trigger again though. That does look like a bug.

[craigbarratt]

I've thought about this some more and the current beahvior doesn't seem right, so I consider this a bug. I've updated the time trigger logic to address the issues you raised. Now if you specify period(now, 1 hours, 15:00) it will only trigger from now until 15:00 today, or not at all if now is already after 15:00. The change basically uses the explicit or implicit date from the first argument as the date for the third argument if its date is omitted. See 66e95d1.

[DivusJulius]

Thank you for your response. I remember reading the original response but It seems like I did not answer.
I solved this issue for myself by specifying the date as mentioned above. This worked because I wanted to use the functions in closures and its not a lot of extra work to retrieve the date info and just construct an absolute date instead of just a time.

I will do some further testing once the change has been released.

My personal solution to the problem.

#@time_trigger("once(now)")
def setup_period_trigger_test(trigger_time: datetime):
    task.unique("period_trigger_test_setup")
    log.warning("setup_period_trigger_test")

    date = trigger_time.date()
    date_str = date.isoformat()
    log.warning("iso_date %s", date_str)

    @time_trigger(f"period(now, 1min, {date_str} 10:50:00)") 
    def period_trigger_test(trigger_time: datetime):
        task.unique("period_trigger_test2")
        log.warning("trigger_time %s", trigger_time)

    task.sleep(5*60)