SilverStripe Simple Jobs

An alternative to run cron jobs that uses simple HTTP requests.

This module require SilverStripe CronTask.

Why?

Configuring cron jobs is painful. Maybe you don't have proper access to your server, or maybe it's difficult to make sure that php is run under the right user. This is why you can simply rely on an external service to trigger a HTTP request to a given script that will take care of any task you have to run.

How to setup

Using an external service

Simply call every 5 minutes the following url : yoursite.com/simple-jobs/trigger

In order to do that, you can use for example UptimeRobot. As an added bonus, will you monitor if your webserver is responding which is always nice to have :-).

Using your own requests

Don't like using a service like UptimeRobot ? Feel free to setup your own http requets using Windows Scheduled Tasks or another server using cron.

For instance

* * * * * wget -O - http://yoursite.com/simple-jobs/trigger >/dev/null 2>&1

Using regular cron jobs

You can also use this module similarly to the base crontask module, while getting all the logging benefits.

Add the following command to your cron definition:

* * * * * www-data /usr/bin/php /path/to/silverstripe/docroot/framework/cli-script.php simple-jobs/trigger

Enabling BasicAuth

To prevent malicious users to hammer your website by calling the url, you can enable BasicAuth. Define the following in your config file:

LeKoala\SimpleJobs\SimpleJobsController:
    username: "myusername"
    password: "mypassword"

And make sure that the proper headers are sent by UptimeRobot or any system you use to trigger HTTP requests.

Testing

You can also test your tasks by visiting yoursite.com/simple-jobs/.

This is enabled only if Dev mode is active. You can click on any task in the list, and choose to run it according to its schedule or force the task to run.

If needed, you can also trigger manually your jobs. Simply visit /simple-jobs/trigger_manual/YourClass.

Log results

As an added bonus, this module will by default log all results returned by the process() method. It will be stored in the database for further analysis.

Any task returning "false" will be marked as Failed.

Any task that triggers an exception will be marked as Failed and the Exception will be stored as the result. This has also the side benefit of allowing other tasks to be run even if one of them raise an exception.

Predefined schedules

If you don't like the cron syntax, you can also use any constant from the SimpleJobSchedules class, that provides sane defaults for most common schedules.

class TestCron implements CronTask {

    /**
    * run this task every every day
    *
    * @return string
    */
    public function getSchedule() {
        return SimpleJobsSchedules::EVERY_DAY;
    }

    /**
    *
    * @return void
    */
    public function process() {
        echo 'hello';
    }
}

It also comes with two methods: everyDay and everyWeek, that allow you to define the task to run on a specific hour or day in the week. This is useful if you have multiple daily or weekly task and that you don't want to run them at the same time (because it could cause a timeout).

Simple Tasks

This module also has a limited job runner feature in form of the SimpleTask class. A simple task is simply a delayed call to a given method on a given DataObject. You can pass any number of json serializable parameters (not object instances, for example).

$task = new SimpleTask();

$task->addToTask($this, "removeStuff", [
    $some_stuff_id,
]);

One simple task can have many calls to any number of methods on any number of object instances. Keep in mind that the SimpleJobsController will only run one task each time (every 5 minutes or less depending on how you configured the module), so you may want to group in one simple task everything that is related to one specific process.

Compatibility

Tested with 4.4+

Maintainer

LeKoala - [email protected]