Ultimate Cron

The Ultimate Cron handling for Drupal.
Runs cron jobs individually in parallel using configurable rules, pool management and load balancing.

2.5 READY!

Ultimate Cron 7.x-2.5 is out now.
Ultimate Cron 1.x documentation can be found at https://drupal.org/node/1666944

The old project page for Ultimate Cron 1.x can be found at https://drupal.org/node/2195381

Changes

• No more dependecy to Background Process. Ultimate Cron now works without Background Process. However, Background Process is still supported for true parallelism
• Refactored to use cTools plugins, making it easier to extend Ultimate Cron.
• Now includes the daemonizer and queue throttling features, previously found in the modules Ultimate Cron Daemonizer and Ultimate Cron Queue Scaler
• Hopefully a more robust lock and logging mechanism.
• Integration with nodejs for live update on cron page
• Nagios support has not been re-implemented

Upgrade path from 7.x-1.x and previous

• Add and enable Chaos tool suite (ctools) before upgrading Ultimate Cron (not just before running update.php but even before upgrading the code).
• Disable cron while upgrading.
• Existing db-stored settings will be upgraded.
• Existing features containing Ultimate Cron settings will be stored in db, for easier re-export.
• Existing log table will be modified. Beware, that if the table contains many entries, the upgrade may take some time.

Plugins

Ultimate Cron is built upon 4 plugin types.

• Settings: - plugins that provide custom settings for jobs (bundled: general, queue).
• Schedulers: - plugins that provide a mechanism for whether or not a job should run at a certain time (bundled: simple, crontab).
• Launchers: - plugins that provide a way of launching jobs (bundled: serial, background_process).
• Loggers: - plugins that provide a logging backing for job status (bundled: database, cache).

Ultimate Cron 7.x-2.x documentation can be found at https://drupal.org/node/2195383

Features

• Works out-of-the box in most cases (or aims to)
• Parallel exection of cron jobs
• Configuration per job (enable/disable, rules, etc.)
• Multiple rules per cron job
• Pool management and load balancing using Background process
• Support for Drupal Queues
• Overview of cron jobs
• Log history of cron jobs
• Status/error messages per cron job, providing easy debugging of troublesome cron jobs
• Uses hook_cronapi() (Elysia Cron compatible, NOT 2.x, please use hook_cron_alter() for similar functionality)
• hook_cron_alter() for easy adding/manipulating cron jobs
• Poormans cron with keepalive a granularity of 1 minute
• Drush support (list, start, enable/disable jobs from the command line)

Dependencies

• cTools

Supported 3rd party modules

• Drush
• Advanced Help
• Features
• Node.js integration

Caveats

• Logging can be quite extensive for some. This can be controlled via Watchdog Filtering

Declaring new cron jobs

From ultimate_cron.api.php

<?php

/**
 * Inform Ultimate Cron about cron jobs.
 *
 * Note that the result of this hook is cached.
 *
 * @return array
 *   Array of cron jobs, keyed by name.
 *    - "title": (optional) The title of the cron job. If not provided, the
 *      name of the cron job will be used.
 *    - "file": (optional) The file where the callback lives.
 *    - "module": The module where this job lives.
 *    - "file path": (optional) The path to the directory containing the file
 *      specified in "file". This defaults to the path to the module
 *      implementing the hook.
 *    - "callback": (optional) The callback to call when running the job.
 *      Defaults to the job name.
 *    - "callback arguments": (optional) Arguments for the callback. Defaults
 *      to array().
 *    - "enabled": (optional) Initial state of the job. Defaults to TRUE.
 *    - "tags": (optional) Tags for the job. Defaults to array().
 *    - "settings": (optional) Default settings (plugin type) for this job.
 *      Example of a job declaring some default settings for a plugin called
 *      "some_plugin":
 *      'settings' => array(
 *        'some_plugin' => array(
 *          'some_value' => 60,
 *        ),
 *      ),
 *    - "scheduler": (optional) Default scheduler (plugin type) for this job.
 *      Example of a job using the crontab scheduler as default:
 *      'scheduler' => array(
 *        'name' => 'crontab',
 *        'crontab' => array(
 *          'rules' => array('* * * * *'),
 *        ),
 *      ),
 *    - "launcher": (optional) Default launcher (plugin type) for this job.
 *      Example of a job using the serial launcher as default:
 *      'launcher' => array(
 *        'name' => 'serial',
 *        'serial' => array(
 *          'thread' => 'any',
 *        ),
 *      ),
 *    - "logger": (optional) Default logger (plugin type) for this job.
 *      Example of a job using the cache logger as default:
 *      'logger' => array(
 *        'name' => 'cache',
 *        'cache' => array(
 *          'bin' => 'mycachebin',
 *        ),
 *      ),
 */
function hook_cronapi() {
  $items = array();

  $items['example_my_cron_job_1'] = array(
    'title' => t('This is my cron job #1'),
    'file' => 'example.jobs.inc',
    'file path' => drupal_get_path('module', 'example') . '/cron',
    'callback' => 'example_my_cron_job_callback',
    'callback arguments' => array('cronjob1'),
    'enabled' => FALSE,
    'tags' => array('example'),
    'settings' => array(
      'example_plugin' => array(
        'example_setting' => 'example_value',
      ),
    ),
    'scheduler' => array(
      'name' => 'crontab',
      'crontab' => array(
        'rules' => array('* * * * *'),
      ),
    ),
    'launcher' => array(
      'name' => 'serial',
      'serial' => array(
        'thread' => 'any',
      ),
    ),
    'logger' => array(
      'name' => 'cache',
      'cache' => array(
        'bin' => 'my_cache_bin',
      ),
    ),
  );

  return $items;
}

?>

In fact, all options are optional, so the most minimal way of declaring a new cronjob is:

<?php
/**
 * Implements hook_cronapi().
 */
function example_cronapi() {
  $items = array();
  $items['example_my_cron_job'] = array();
  return $items;
}

/**
 * The callback for the cron job,
 */
function example_my_cron_job($job) {
}

?>

Related modules

• Feeds Ultimate Cron
• Ultimate Cron Aegir
• Ultimate Cron Rule
• Ultimate Cron Daemonizer
• Ultimate Cron Queue Scalar