when I call a function with threading.Timer like below:
threading.Timer(LOOP_TIME,self.broadCast).start()
does broadCast get run in a separate thread? Or is it just in the same thread? I'm using threading.Timer so I can have a function called every so much time interval. I do not want the broadCast function to be called outside of the main thread.
Yes. You can look into Python threading.py source code:
def Timer(*args, **kwargs):
"""Factory function to create a Timer object.
Timers call a function after a specified number of seconds:
t = Timer(30.0, f, args=[], kwargs={})
t.start()
t.cancel() # stop the timer's action if it's still waiting
"""
return _Timer(*args, **kwargs)
class _Timer(Thread):
"""Call a function after a specified number of seconds:
t = Timer(30.0, f, args=[], kwargs={})
t.start()
t.cancel() # stop the timer's action if it's still waiting
"""
def __init__(self, interval, function, args=[], kwargs={}):
Thread.__init__(self)
self.interval = interval
self.function = function
self.args = args
self.kwargs = kwargs
self.finished = Event()
Source code available in Python source code repository.
If you want timers and your main thread is not doing co-operative multitasking, I suggest you refactor your code so that you can use it from other threads.