#164 Cron in Ruby

Jun 01, 2009 | 8 minutes | Tools, Plugins, Deployment, Background Jobs

Cron is great for handling recurring tasks, but it is an external dependency with a crazy syntax. In this episode I show you how to use Whenever to create cron jobs with Ruby.

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          bash
        
crontab -e
crontab -l
sudo rake gems:install
wheneverize .
whenever --update-crontab store

          config/environment.rb
        
config.gem 'javan-whenever', :lib => false, :source => 'http://gems.github.com'

          config/schedule.rb
        
every 2.hours do
  rake "thinking_sphinx:index"
end

every :reboot do
  rake "thinking_sphinx:start"
end

every :saturday, :at => "4:38am" do
  command "rm -rf #{RAILS_ROOT}/tmp/cache"
  runner "Cart.remove_abandoned"
end

          config/deploy.rb
        
after "deploy:symlink", "deploy:update_crontab"

namespace :deploy do
  desc "Update the crontab file"
  task :update_crontab, :roles => :db do
    run "cd #{release_path} && whenever --update-crontab #{application}"
  end
end