I'm creating an event notification system for our gaming community. However, I'm not entirely sure where to start.

I have a dictionary of events and their times, for example:

{'Game Night': 19:00 2013-06-29,
'3CB vs ST3 Match': 18:45 2013-07-02,
'Website Maintainance': 13:00 2013-07-16,
etc}

The times have already been converted to the correct datetime format using strptime(). What I now need is for the user to be notified when one of these events is about to occur (e.g a 15 minute alert, then a 5 minute alert).

For example:

"NOTICE: 3CB vs ST3 Match will begin in 15 minutes!"
10 minutes later...
"NOTICE: 3CB vs ST3 Match will begin in 5 minutes!"

My question is this: How can I get python to wait until an event is near (by comparing the current time, with the event's time), then perform an action (e.g. a notification in my case)?

P.S I'm using Python 2.7.5 (due to lack of API updates)

Try to loop until your check evaluates True:

import time
interval = 0.2  # nr of seconds
while True:stop_looping = myAlertCheck()if stop_looping:breaktime.sleep(interval)

The sleep gives you CPU time for other tasks.

EDIT

Ok, I'm not sure what exactly your question is. First I thought you wanted to know how to let python 'wait' for an event. Now it seems you want to know how to compare event dates with the current date. I think the following is a more complete approach. I think you can fill in the details yourself??

import time
from datetime import datetimeinterval = 3  # nr of seconds    
events = {'Game Night': '14:00 2013-06-23','3CB vs ST3 Match': '18:45 2013-07-02','Website Maintainance': '13:00 2013-07-16', 
}def myAlertCheck(events):for title, event_date in events.iteritems():ed = datetime.strptime(event_date, '%H:%M %Y-%m-%d')delta_s = (datetime.now() - ed).secondsif delta_s < (15 * 60):print 'within 15 minutes %s starts' % titlereturn Truewhile True:stop_looping = myAlertCheck(events)if stop_looping:breaktime.sleep(interval)