Re: Deploying scheduled jobs with PEAR

Hi Tim, On Thu, Dec 10, 2009 at 9:30 AM, Tim Jackson <lists@timj.co.uk> wrote: > Hi, > > Consider the situation where you have one or more applications installed > using PEAR, and each of them need to set up some scheduled jobs ("cron > jobs"). > > Does anyone have a good existing solution for this using PEAR? I don't know of any existing solution. > The logical way I can come up with doing it so far is this: > > - create a new file role called "scheduledjob" or something, which >  installs into a special directory > > - define (by convention) that files installed using that role are in a >  specific format (say, for example, the typical crontab format like >  "*/5 * * * * php /path/to/script.php"). Naturally, these would almost >  certainly need to be pre-processed with tasks:replace etc. to fill in the >  file paths, php bin location etc. > > - use a custom task to, on installation of a file with role "scheduledjob", >  parse it and set up cron (or the equivalent on other platforms, e.g. >  Windows Scheduled Tasks). Sounds good. > Is there any existing package to do the work within that latter point to set > up the job? I was looking for something like System_Cron or > System_ScheduledTask but didn't find anything. (If not, then it could > potentially be a new PEAR lib, for example System_ScheduledTask, with > drivers like System_ScheduledTask_Cron [possibly with several variants for > the various crons out there], System_ScheduledTask_Windows etc. I already > have some sample code for this for Linux crons.) This sounds like a good pepr project. > But does anyone have any other well-established solution to this? Even > pearweb just has the scripts in a directory called "cron", marked with role > "www". As far as I can tell, these have to be installed manually; there > doesn't seem to be anything in the post-installation tasks to do it. Correct, right now those require manual scheduling. > N.B. I'm quite keen on using "standard" system schedulers rather than > solutions like "every X hits to my website, trigger some task" on the basis > that they are proven and don't rely on some external mechanism. > > Thanks, > > Tim I'd submit something to pepr. First the basics like the scheduling scripts to add, remove, and modify scheduled tasks, then work towards supporting the custom roles. This sounds like a really useful feature for full-stack applications - something I might take advantage of myself. -- Brett Bieber