[SOLVED] How can we allow user to set a cron JOB from frontend in Laravel?

Issue

I have a setting section in my laravel application. In this section I have a setting for defining a sync time. So the user can set their preferred time for sync data from laravel application to a third party CRM(Salesforce).

For now, I am storing a sync time into Database table. Now I want to run a cron JOB at that time for a particular user.

I have already created a cron job script and the cron job script is working fine. I am able to test cron job manually I just need to automate it with user setting(Preferred time). My Cron JOB URL https://my-domain.org/cronjob?user_id=101

I tried to use laravel scheduling but this not fulfillig my requirement.

Is there any other better solution available at laravel?

Solution

There is some information missing but I try to assume a few things to hopefully propose a working solution using the Laravel scheduler.

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Assuming you store the time at which the CRON runs in the database as 01:00 for 1 o'clock in the night you could do the following:

protected function schedule(Schedule $schedule)
{
    User::query()->whereNotNull('cron_time')->each(function (User $user) use ($schedule) {
        $schedule->command('app:import', ['user_id' => $user->id])
                 ->withoutOverlapping() // prevents running the same command (+ parameters) twice at the same time, should only be a problem if the command can run > 24 hours, but still a safe thing to do
                 ->dailyAt($user->cron_time);
    });
}

• I dreamed up that you stored the information on the User model
• That you used a flag in the database called cron_time which contains the 01:00 or is null if the cron is disabled
• The cron needs to run daily at that user supplied time
• The import command is called app:import and is a console command that accept a user_id argument with the user id to run the import for

This might help you adapt the above to how it's structured in you own app.

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If you want to use queued jobs to execute the imports you could also create the app:import CLI command to just dispatch that job instead of actually running the import. Depending on the amount of imports it might be a good idea to prevent long running scheduler commands and have the ability to retry and have a timeout.

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Another option could also be to have a daily scheduled command that dispatches jobs to the queue scheduled to run at a specific time (which does not work with the SES driver). For more about that see: https://laravel.com/docs/5.8/queues#delayed-dispatching.

Answered By - Alex Bouma

Answer Checked By - Gilberto Lyons (WPSolving Admin)