How can I periodically run a Python script to import data into a Django app?
Forget about this being a Django app for a second. It is just a load of Python code.
What this means is, your Python script is absolutely free to import the database models you have in your Django app and use them as you would in a standard module in your project.
The only difference here, is that you may need to take care to import everything Django needs to work with those modules, whereas when a request enters through the normal web interface it would take care of that for you.
Just import Django and the required models.py/any other modules you need for it work from your app. It is your code, not a black box. You can import it from where ever the hell you want.
EDIT: The link from Rohan's answer to the Django docs for custom management commands is definitely the least painful way to do what I said above.
I have a script which scans an email inbox for specific emails. That part's working well and I'm able to acquire the data I'm interested in. I'd now like to take that data and add it to a Django app which will be used to display the information.
I can run the script on a CRON job to periodically grab new information, but how do I then get that data into the Django app?
The Django server is running on a Linux box under Apache / FastCGI if that makes a difference.
[Edit] - in response to Srikar's question When you are saying " get that data into the Django app" what exactly do you mean?...
The Django app will be responsible for storing the data in a convenient form so that it can then be displayed via a series of views. So the app will include a model with suitable members to store the incoming data. I'm just unsure how you hook into Django to make new instances of those model objects and tell Django to store them.