Task Scheduling Sprinkle for UserFrosting 4

This Sprinkle provides a framework to add schedule functions to UserFrosting similar to CRON jobs. But instead of adding each function to CRON, you simply setup one CRON job which triggers the script. The main idea is that you can manage all schedules in the admin interface of userfrosting.

Important: BETA version - initial work in progress

the current code is still beta and might change without managing any migration or dependencies. that means if you use this sprinkle you do it at your own risk! (be sure I will try to keep it as stable as possible but can't guarantee...)

Current work

this is just an open list of current tasks I'm working on

• add permissions and change whole code to respect the functions
• add language files at least in english and german, can be extended if somebody needs more
• run a lot of tests on live environment to find the bugs ... or not :)

Future improvements

following some ideas that came up while writing the code

• Schedule plan: in current setup the scheduling (next run, last activity id) is saved in the schedule itselfs. while this is convenient for easy querying there are some drawbacks, especially the "schedule update" on each run. It might be better to have the scheduling (next run) as open activity in the activities table. Changing the setup would have a full rewrite of the code
• Parallel runs: Currently the schedule worker takes the open schedules one by one. while this might be ok if you have just a small amount of schedules, but might be a bad idea for larger projects. Eg. if you have a schedule which takes a lot of time, everything else is stopped meanwhile... maybe there is an easy way to start the functions in parallel, adding some "priority" to schedules...
• Performance management: So far I did no performance testing on the scheduling job. maybe there is a way to restrict the available memory for the schedules to not have any impact on the frontend users
• Timezones: currently the whole scheduling is based on the server timezone. for larger projects it might be better to have a scheduling based on timezones which would allow a better performance management (eg. less impact for frontend users if you perform the schedules at night)

Help and Contributing

If you find any bug, feel free to open an issue or better submit a pull request.

Installation

Following some information to get the scheduler up and running

Dependencies

The sprinkle has the following dependencies

• dragonmantank/cron-expression is used for easy scheduling management
• symfony/lock is used to manage overlapping of schedules, see Documentation
• lcharette/UF_FormGenerator for create/edit/delete schedules in the interface

Requirements

because of the dependencies there are some requirements to be aware of before you can use this sprinkle

• PHP 7.0+ required for dragonmantank/cron-expression
• UserFrosting 4.1.x for lcharette/UF_FormGenerator

Installation

Edit UserFrosting app/sprinkles.json file and add the following to the require list :

• "lcharette/uf_formgenerator": "^2.0.0". Also add FormGenerator to the base list.
• "ursboller/uf_scheduler": "^1.0.0". Also add Scheduler to the base list.

For example:

{
    "require": {
        "lcharette/uf_formgenerator": "^2.0.0",
        "ursboller/uf_scheduler": "^1.0.0"
    },
    "base": [
        "core",
        "account",
        "admin",
        "FormGenerator",
        "Scheduler"
    ]
}

Run composer update then php bakery bake to install the sprinkle.

The scheduler

Before we dig into the single settings and functions from the scheduler a short description how the scheduler works.

The idea

While cron jobs are available on most systems it is hard to manage them since you would need to have console access to get it up and running. Therefore the idea came up to use something similar to Task Scheduling - Laravel but with a nice backend interface. It would be perfect if all users with permission can manage single tasks.

Thanks to the UserFrosting Team which gave me some help the scheduler uses the bakery command which allows to work within sprinkles. beeing in the framework allows to use all the features that are available in the application anyway, its just a simple sprinkle really similar what you would find somewhere else.

Starting the cron schedule

When using the scheduler, you only need to add the following Cron entry to your server. If you do not know how to add Cron entries to your server, consider using a service such as Laravel Forge which can manage the Cron entries for you:

* * * * * cd /path-to-your-project && php bakery schedule >> /dev/null 2>&1
This cron will call the scheduler every minute. When the schedule command is executed, the scheduler will evaluate your scheduled tasks and runs the functions that are due.

Available pages

in the interface there are several pages which can be used to manage the tasks.

Dashboard route: /schedules

gives you an overview of the overall settings as well as the next schedules and last activities

Schedules list route: /schedules/list

allow search/filtering for specific schedules. you have direct links to both schedules and functions. this is also the place to start, stop, delete or add new schedules

Functions list route: /schedules/functions

allow to search for single functions with direct link to function details

Permission management

Advanced usage

how the scheduler works

add own scheduling functions

setup new function class

setup migration

Running tests

currently there are no built in tests for this sprinkle. you use it at your own risks so please do a propper testing yourself!

Licence

By Urs Boller. Copyright (c) 2019, free to use in personal and commercial software as per the MIT license.