Cron

Introduction

Cron is a Catalyst Cloud Scale component that is a job scheduler that can be used to automate the execution of jobs periodically at specified schedules or intervals. Catalyst initiates the cron daemon to run in the background at all times. The cron daemon is a program that is responsible for invoking a cron job when its determined schedule approaches.

You can use Catalyst Cron to run administrative and maintenance tasks periodically or to automate the execution of specific schedule-based processes in the application. Some scenarios where cron can be used include: periodically synchronizing your Catalyst data with a third-party application, updating a cache item’s value at regular intervals, or sending monthly, automated, system-generated emails to your application users.

Catalyst Cron can automatically invoke any of the following at specified schedules:

• Third-party URLs: Any third-party URLs can be invoked and you can post or modify data in the endpoint
• Cron functions: Cron functions are custom coding structures that contain the logic of the job to be executed by a cron. You can code them to perform recurring tasks such as backing up data or any one-time tasks that need to be executed at a custom schedule.
• Circuit: Circuits is a Catalyst Serverless component, that enables you automate workflows. You can design the schema of a circuit and pass a JSON input to it to orchestrate tasks upon the invocation of the associated cron.

You can schedule the cron job to be executed once or recursively by defining the specific date and time of the execution or the interval period for recursion.

Catalyst enables you to easily create and configure cron jobs from the remote console. You can also manage cron jobs or view cron resource statistics using these components:

1. Application Alerts: Catalyst enables developers to configure automatic alerts to be sent to specific email addresses when a Catalyst cron encounters failure, code exception, or timeout.
2. Metrics: You can view usage statistics of the cron jobs in your project, such as the- number of active or inactive jobs and the execution count of each cron job.

To practice working with Catalyst cron, refer to this tutorial.