Found in: Addons → plugins

Cron Jobs 12.09.28

Allows other plugins to register actions that will be executed on a scheduled basis.

This plugins implements a Cron feature in Vanilla. It has been designed to allow 3rd party plugins to easily register themselves, allowing for some operations to be executed on a scheduled basis.

Notes

• This plugin is still in its Beta. Although some testing has been performed, there may be bugs I haven't yet found.
• Please read Changelog.txt file included in the package to see what's new in each version.

Usage

Registering a Cron Action

Here's how a plugin can register its Cron task(s).

1. Implement a class which exposes a public Cron method, declared as public function Cron(). No parameters will passed to this method, yet. We'll calls this class CronTaskClass.
   
2. Inside CronTaskClass->Cron(), implement any action that has to be executed when Cron will run. For example, it could be the cleanup of some historical data.
   
3. In the Plugin Controller, implement a CronJobRegister handler, declared as public function CronJobsPlugin_CronJobRegister_Handler($Sender){. In it, create an instance of CronTaskClass and register it with the command $Sender->RegisterCronJob($CronTaskClassInstance);.
   

Running Cron Tasks

Cron execution is triggered by simply opening the /cron URL in your Vanilla installation.
Important: by default, Cron execution can be triggered at any time by anyone. However, the Plugin implements several security mechanisms to restrict access to such feature, such as IP Filtering, Security Key and Request Throttling.

Scheduling Cron Execution

To schedule it, create a CronTab task which will open such URL, for example using wget.
In the following example, the crontab command shown below will activate the cron tasks automatically on the hour:
0 * * * * wget -O - -q -t 1 http://www.myvanilla.com/cron

Limitations

• Cron will execute all registered tasks every time it runs. It's up to the 3rd party plugins to determine if it's time to do something or not. For example, Cron may scheduled to run every hour, but a plugin may want to perform its task once a day. It's up to the plugin to handle this condition accordingly.

• It's possible to register each CronTaskClass instance only once. If a Plugin needs to register more than one Cron action, it will have to implement separate classes and call RegisterCronJob() multiple times.

Change Log

12.09.28
- Added informational message in Cron History page, displayed when no data is
found.
- Added creation of an alias path "/cron", which can be used to trigger the Cron
execution instead of the canonical "/plugins/cronjobs/cron"

12.11.09
- Removed all calls by reference for compatibility with PHP 5.4+

12.11.22
- Removed calls by reference missed during previous cleanup

13.01.07
- Fixed minor bugs that would throw an error if PHP Error Level was set to throw errors on NOTICE messages

13.02.24
- Fixed bug in creation of shortcut Cron route
- Fixed bug in execution of Cron Jobs

13.02.26
- Removed calls to deprecated functions
- Fixed bug in logging mechanism after the execution of Cron Jobs

13.04.02
- Corrected issue with permissions. Previous versions allowed only SuperAdmin to access Plugin's settings.

All feedback is welcome. If you find it particularly useful, feel free to buy me a coffee! :)