Running QGIS scripts as scheduled tasks
The theme of this book is using PyQGIS to automate QGIS to transform it from a desktop application into a framework. Most of the time, when you are automating a process, you do so because you want to repeat that workflow over and over again. If the workflow is fairly static, with only a few simple variables, you can even automate running that task on a schedule. In this recipe, we'll automate downloading some precipitation data, and clipping it to a political boundary. Then, we'll set up that process to run automatically on a periodic basis.
Getting ready
We'll be creating a standalone QGIS script. So, you'll need to create a Python file and open it in a text editor.You will also need to install the Python pytz and schedule modules, both available on PyPI. Finally, you'll need to download the following zipped shapefile and extract it to a directory named ms in you qgis_data directory:
