README

Makes scheduling tasks in CakePHP much simpler.

Author

Trent Richardson [http://trentrichardson.com]

License

You may use this project under MIT license. http://trentrichardson.com/Impromptu/MIT-LICENSE.txt

How It Works

SchedulerShell works by scheduling one cron (SchedulerShell) for your project. Then in bootstrap.php you can create intervals for all your tasks. Deploying new scheduled tasks are now much easier; one crontab entry executes all your tasks.

Install

This Shell was developed for CakePHP 3.

Composer Installation (recommended)

In your project's composer.json file add this to your require:

"trentrichardson/cakephp-scheduler": "~3.0"

Manual Installation

Copy the Scheduler plugin into your App/Plugin folder and rename the folder to Scheduler.

Load the Plugin

In your bootstrap.php file add either:

Plugin::loadAll();

Plugin::load('Scheduler',['autoload'=>true]);

Schedule a single system cron by the shortest interval you need for SchedulerShell.php. For example, if you have 5 tasks and the most often run is every 5 minutes, then schedule this cron to run at least every 5 minutes. For more help see Shells as Cron Jobs.

Example cron job:

*/5 * * * * cd /path/to/app && bin/cake Scheduler.Scheduler

This would run the SchedulerShell every 5 minutes.

Now once this shell is scheduled we are able to add our entries to bootstrap.php. Lets say we want to schedule a CleanUp task daily at 5am and a NewsletterTask for every 15 minutes.

Configure::write('SchedulerShell.jobs', [
	'CleanUp' => ['interval' => 'next day 5:00', 'task' => 'CleanUp'],// tomorrow at 5am
	'Newsletters' => ['interval' => 'PT15M', 'task' => 'Newsletter'] //every 15 minutes
]);

The key to each entry will be used to store the previous run. These must be unique!

interval is set one of two ways.

For set times of day we use PHP's relative time formats: "next day 5:00".
To use an interval to achieve "every 15 minutes" we use DateInterval string format: "PT15M".

task is simply the name of the Task.

There are a couple optional arguments you may pass: "action" and "pass".

action defaults to "execute", which is the method name to call in the task you specify.

pass defaults to [], which is the array of arguments to pass to your "action".

Configure::write('SchedulerShell.jobs', [
	'CleanUp' => ['interval' => 'next day 5:00', 'task' => 'CleanUp', 'action' => 'execute', 'pass' => [] ],
	'Newsletters' => ['interval' => 'PT15M', 'task' => 'Newsletter', 'action' => 'execute', 'pass' => [] ]
));

Storage of Results

SchedulerShell keeps track of each run in a json file. By default this is stored in TMP and is named "cron_scheduler.json".

If you need to change either of these you may use:

// change the file name
Configure::write('SchedulerShell.storeFile', "scheduler_results.json");
// change the path (note the ending /)
Configure::write('SchedulerShell.storePath', "/path/to/save/");

Preventing Simultaneous SchedulerShells Running Same Tasks

By default, the SchedulerShell will exit if it is already running and has been for less than 10 minutes. You can adjust this by setting:

// change the number of seconds to wait before running a parallel SchedulerShell; 0 = do not exit
Configure::write('SchedulerShell.processTimeout', 5*60);

This works by creating a flag file while the process is running, and deleting this file once it is complete. If the file exists, but is older than the timeout specified the scheduler will continue. Although you shouldn't need to, you can change the name of this file:

// change the name of the processing flag file
Configure::write('SchedulerShell.processingFlagFile', '.cron_scheduler_processing_flag');

Other Notes/Known Issues

The optional pass arguments have not been thoroughly tested
PHP prior to version 5.3.6 only used relative datetime for the DateTime::modify() function. This could result in an interval of "next day 5:00" not running if the previous lastRun time was 05:02. Therefore this plugin should only be run on PHP >= 5.3.6.

Contributing

Contributions are much appreciated. Before you burn up too much time on a fix, check the posted issues, pull requests, and branches to see if someone has addressed the issue.

When making changes keep in mind the master branch is always the latest stable version. I do not apply changes directly to this branch, but rather to the cakephp-v* branches. When the latest cakephp version's branch is stable I tag it and merge it with master.

The quick overview:

Fork/Checkout the cakephp-v* branch of the cake version you're applying changes for
From a terminal cd into the directory and run composer install
Write any tests and changes you would like to make
Run vendor/bin/phpunit to verify all tests pass and your code works
Commit, Push, and send a pull request back to the cakephp-v* branch

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