rufus-scheduler

rufus-scheduler

Job scheduler for Ruby (at, cron, in and every jobs).

It uses threads.

Note: maybe are you looking for the README of rufus-scheduler 2.x? (especially if you're using Dashing which is stuck on rufus-scheduler 2.0.24)

Quickstart:

# quickstart.rb

require 'rufus-scheduler'

scheduler = Rufus::Scheduler.new

scheduler.in '3s' do
  puts 'Hello... Rufus'
end

scheduler.join
  #
  # let the current thread join the scheduler thread
  #
  # (please note that this join should be removed when scheduling
  # in a web application (Rails and friends) initializer)

(run with ruby quickstart.rb)

Various forms of scheduling are supported:

require 'rufus-scheduler'

scheduler = Rufus::Scheduler.new

# ...

scheduler.in '10d' do
  # do something in 10 days
end

scheduler.at '2030/12/12 23:30:00' do
  # do something at a given point in time
end

scheduler.every '3h' do
  # do something every 3 hours
end
scheduler.every '3h10m' do
  # do something every 3 hours and 10 minutes
end

scheduler.cron '5 0 * * *' do
  # do something every day, five minutes after midnight
  # (see "man 5 crontab" in your terminal)
end

# ...

Rufus-scheduler uses fugit for parsing time strings, et-orbi for pairing time and tzinfo timezones.

non-features

Rufus-scheduler (out of the box) is an in-process, in-memory scheduler. It uses threads.

It does not persist your schedules. When the process is gone and the scheduler instance with it, the schedules are gone.

A rufus-scheduler instance will go on scheduling while it is present among the objects in a Ruby process. To make it stop scheduling you have to call its #shutdown method.

Please note: rufus-scheduler is not a cron replacement.

related gems

• ruby-clock - a clock process / job scheduler for Ruby
• Puma-Rufus-Scheduler - Puma plugin to run Rufus-Scheduler
• Schked - Framework agnostic Rufus-Scheduler wrapper to run recurring jobs

similar gems

• Whenever - let cron call back your Ruby code, trusted and reliable cron drives your schedule
• Clockwork - rufus-scheduler inspired gem
• Crono - an in-Rails cron scheduler
• PerfectSched - highly available distributed cron built on Sequel and more

note about the 3.0 line

It's a complete rewrite of rufus-scheduler.

There is no EventMachine-based scheduler anymore.

I don't know what this Ruby thing is, where are my Rails?

I'll drive you right to the tracks.

notable changes:

• As said, no more EventMachine-based scheduler
• scheduler.every('100') { will schedule every 100 seconds (previously, it would have been 0.1s). This aligns rufus-scheduler with Ruby's sleep(100)
• The scheduler isn't catching the whole of Exception anymore, only StandardError
• The error_handler is #on_error (instead of #on_exception), by default it now prints the details of the error to $stderr (used to be $stdout)
• Rufus::Scheduler::TimeOutError renamed to Rufus::Scheduler::TimeoutError
• Introduction of "interval" jobs. Whereas "every" jobs are like "every 10 minutes, do this", interval jobs are like "do that, then wait for 10 minutes, then do that again, and so on"
• Introduction of a lockfile: true/filename mechanism to prevent multiple schedulers from executing
• "discard_past" is on by default. If the scheduler (its host) sleeps for 1 hour and a every '10m' job is on, it will trigger once at wakeup, not 6 times (discard_past was false by default in rufus-scheduler 2.x).
• Introduction of Scheduler #on_pre_trigger and #on_post_trigger callback points

getting help

So you need help. People can help you, but first help them help you, and don't waste their time. Provide a complete description of the issue. If it works on A but not on B and others have to ask you: "so what is different between A and B" you are wasting everyone's time.

"hello", "please" and "thanks" are not swear words.

Go read how to report bugs effectively, twice.

Update: help_help.md might help help you.

issues

Yes, issues can be reported in rufus-scheduler issues, I'd actually prefer bugs in there. If there is nothing wrong with rufus-scheduler, a Stack Overflow question is better.

faq

• It doesn't work...
• I want a refund
• Passenger and rufus-scheduler
• Passenger and rufus-scheduler (2)
• Passenger in-depth spawn methods
• Passenger in-depth spawn methods (smart spawning)
• The scheduler comes up when running the Rails console or a Rake task
• The job triggers twice
• I don't get any of this, I just want it to work in my Rails application
• [I get "zotime.rb:41:in `initialize': cannot determine timezone from nil"](#i-get-zotimerb41in-initialize-cannot-determine-timezone-from-nil)

scheduling

Rufus-scheduler supports five kinds of jobs. in, at, every, interval and cron jobs.

Most of the rufus-scheduler examples show block scheduling, but it's also OK to schedule handler instances or handler classes.

in, at, every, interval, cron

In and at jobs trigger once.

require 'rufus-scheduler'

scheduler = Rufus::Scheduler.new

scheduler.in '10d' do
  puts "10 days reminder for review X!"
end

scheduler.at '2014/12/24 2000' do
  puts "merry xmas!"
end

In jobs are scheduled with a time interval, they trigger after that time elapsed. At jobs are scheduled with a point in time, they trigger when that point in time is reached (better to choose a point in the future).

Every, interval and cron jobs trigger repeatedly.

require 'rufus-scheduler'

scheduler = Rufus::Scheduler.new

scheduler.every '3h' do
  puts "change the oil filter!"
end

scheduler.interval '2h' do
  puts "thinking..."
  puts sleep(rand * 1000)
  puts "thought."
end

scheduler.cron '00 09 * * *' do
  puts "it's 9am! good morning!"
end

Every jobs try hard to trigger following the frequency they were scheduled with.

Interval jobs trigger, execute and then trigger again after the interval elapsed. (every jobs time between trigger times, interval jobs time between trigger termination and the next trigger start).

Cron jobs are based on the venerable cron utility (man 5 crontab). They trigger following a pattern given in (almost) the same language cron uses.

Chronic and "Wed at 2pm"

By default, rufus-scheduler relies on Ruby to parse strings like "Wed at 2pm". But most of the time, when calling this on Thursday, the day before is "invoked". Relying on Chronic might solve the issue.

Compare

require 'rufus-scheduler'

scheduler = Rufus::Scheduler.new

scheduler.at('Wed at 2pm') do
  # ... might point in the past and thus get triggered immediately
end

with

require 'chronic'
require 'rufus-scheduler'

scheduler = Rufus::Scheduler.new

scheduler.at('Wed at 2pm') do
  # ... will point to a time in the future and trigger appropriately
end

#schedule_x vs #x

schedule_in, schedule_at, schedule_cron, etc will return the new Job instance.

in, at, cron will return the new Job instance's id (a String).

job_id =
  scheduler.in '10d' do
    # ...
  end
job = scheduler.job(job_id)

# versus

job =
  scheduler.schedule_in '10d' do
    # ...
  end

# also

job =
  scheduler.in '10d', job: true do
    # ...
  end

#schedule and #repeat

Sometimes it pays to be less verbose.

The #schedule methods schedules an at, in or cron job. It just decides based on its input. It returns the Job instance.

scheduler.schedule '10d' do; end.class
  # => Rufus::Scheduler::InJob

scheduler.schedule '2013/12/12 12:30' do; end.class
  # => Rufus::Scheduler::AtJob

scheduler.schedule '* * * * *' do; end.class
  # => Rufus::Scheduler::CronJob

The #repeat method schedules and returns an EveryJob or a CronJob.

scheduler.repeat '10d' do; end.class
  # => Rufus::Scheduler::EveryJob

scheduler.repeat '* * * * *' do; end.class
  # => Rufus::Scheduler::CronJob

(Yes, no combination here gives back an IntervalJob).

schedule blocks arguments (job, time)

A schedule block may be given 0, 1 or 2 arguments.

The first argument is "job", it's simply the Job instance involved. It might be useful if the job is to be unscheduled for some reason.

scheduler.every '10m' do |job|

  status = determine_pie_status

  if status == 'burnt' || status == 'cooked'
    stop_oven
    takeout_pie
    job.unschedule
  end
end

The second argument is "time", it's the time when the job got cleared for triggering (not Time.now).

Note that time is the time when the job got cleared for triggering. If there are mutexes involved, now = mutex_wait_time + time...

"every" jobs and changing the next_time in-flight

It's OK to change the next_time of an every job in-flight:

scheduler.every '10m' do |job|

  # ...

  status = determine_pie_status

  job.next_time = Time.now + 30 * 60 if status == 'burnt'
    #
    # if burnt, wait 30 minutes for the oven to cool a bit
end

It should work as well with cron jobs, not so with interval jobs whose next_time is computed after their block ends its current run.

scheduling handler instances

It's OK to pass any object, as long as it responds to #call(), when scheduling:

class Handler
  def self.call(job, time)
    p "- Handler called for #{job.id} at #{time}"
  end
end

scheduler.in '10d', Handler

# or

class OtherHandler
  def initialize(name)
    @name = name
  end
  def call(job, time)
    p "* #{time} - Handler #{name.inspect} called for #{job.id}"
  end
end

oh = OtherHandler.new('Doe')

scheduler.every '10m', oh
scheduler.in '3d5m', oh

The call method must accept 2 (job, time), 1 (job) or 0 arguments.

Note that time is the time when the job got cleared for triggering. If there are mutexes involved, now = mutex_wait_time + time...

scheduling handler classes

One can pass a handler class to rufus-scheduler when scheduling. Rufus will instantiate it and that instance will be available via job#handler.

class MyHandler
  attr_reader :count
  def initialize
    @count = 0
  end
  def call(job)
    @count += 1
    puts ". #{self.class} called at #{Time.now} (#{@count})"
  end
end

job = scheduler.schedule_every '35m', MyHandler

job.handler
  # => #<MyHandler:0x000000021034f0>
job.handler.count
  # => 0

If you want to keep that "block feeling":

job_id =
  scheduler.every '