Django Celery Expert

Instructions

Step 1: Classify the Request

Identify the task category from the request:

• Django integration — transaction safety, ORM patterns, testing, request correlation → read references/django-integration.md
• Task design — new tasks, calling patterns, chains/groups/chords, idempotency → read references/task-design-patterns.md
• Configuration — broker setup, result backend, worker settings, queue routing → read references/configuration-guide.md
• Error handling — retries, backoff, dead letter queues, timeouts → read references/error-handling.md
• Periodic tasks — Celery Beat, crontab schedules, dynamic schedules, timezone handling → read references/periodic-tasks.md
• Monitoring — Flower, Prometheus, logging, debugging stuck tasks → read references/monitoring-observability.md
• Production deployment — scaling, supervision, containers, health checks → read references/production-deployment.md

If the request spans multiple categories, read all relevant reference files before continuing.

Step 2: Read the Reference File(s)

Read each reference file identified in Step 1. Do not proceed to implementation without reading the relevant reference.

Step 3: Implement

Apply the patterns from the reference file. Before presenting the solution, verify:

• Task arguments are serializable (pass IDs, not model instances)
• Tasks with retries enabled are idempotent
• Errors are logged with context
• Long-running tasks have timeouts configured

Examples

Basic Background Task

Request: "Send welcome emails in the background after user registration"

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

@shared_task(bind=True, max_retries=3)
def send_welcome_email(self, user_id):
    from users.models import User

    try:
        user = User.objects.get(id=user_id)
        send_mail(
            subject="Welcome!",
            message=f"Hi {user.name}, welcome to our platform!",
            from_email="noreply@example.com",
            recipient_list=[user.email],
        )
    except User.DoesNotExist:
        pass
    except Exception as exc:
        raise self.retry(exc=exc, countdown=60 * (2 ** self.request.retries))


# views.py — queue only after the transaction commits
from django.db import transaction

def register(request):
    user = User.objects.create(...)
    transaction.on_commit(lambda: send_welcome_email.delay(user.id))
    return redirect("dashboard")

Task with Progress Tracking

Request: "Process a large CSV import with progress updates"

@shared_task(bind=True)
def import_csv(self, file_path, total_rows):
    from myapp.models import Record

    with open(file_path) as f:
        reader = csv.DictReader(f)
        for i, row in enumerate(reader):
            Record.objects.create(**row)
            if i % 100 == 0:
                self.update_state(
                    state="PROGRESS",
                    meta={"current": i, "total": total_rows},
                )

    return {"status": "complete", "processed": total_rows}


# Poll progress
result = import_csv.AsyncResult(task_id)
if result.state == "PROGRESS":
    progress = result.info.get("current", 0) / result.info.get("total", 1)

Workflow with Chains

Request: "Process an order: validate inventory, charge payment, then send confirmation"

from celery import chain

@shared_task
def validate_inventory(order_id):
    order = Order.objects.get(id=order_id)
    if not order.items_in_stock():
        raise ValueError("Items out of stock")
    return order_id

@shared_task
def charge_payment(order_id):
    order = Order.objects.get(id=order_id)
    order.charge()
    return order_id

@shared_task
def send_confirmation(order_id):
    Order.objects.get(id=order_id).send_confirmation_email()