Ultimate Cron

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

8.x-2.x

This is a port of the 7.x-2.x branch to Drupal 8, using config entities and the Drupal 8+ plugin system.

See https://befused.com/drupal/ultimate-cron/ for an overview on how the module works and how to discover jobs.

2.9 READY!

Ultimate Cron 7.x-2.9 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 dependency 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

Upgrading from an earlier version of Ultimate Cron to a 7.x-2.x version has some caveats. See the documentation.

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 execution 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

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) {
}

?>