Cron Jobs

Cron jobs allow you to run scheduled tasks at specified times or intervals. The crons section of .symfony.cloud.yaml describes these tasks and the schedule when they are triggered. Each item in the list has a unique name identifying a separate cron job:

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        timezone: Europe/Paris

crons:
    update_repo:
        # every day at 1h15 AM
        spec: 15 1 * * *
        cmd: |
            croncape sh -c "if [ ! -d var/data/code/.git ]; then \
            git clone https://github.com/... var/data/code; else \
            cd var/data/code && git fetch && \
            git reset --hard origin/master; fi"
    update_doc:
        # every day at 3h45 AM
        spec: 45 3 * * *
        cmd: croncape bin/console app:doc-update
    

Time Specification

The spec property follows the IEEE standard crontab.

By default, the time is interpreted in UTC timezone. Change the timezone used for cron tasks by setting the global timezone property. Its value is one of the tz database region codes.

Command to run

The cmd property is the command that should be executed. The command is executed in the /app directory by the same user as the Web one.

To get feedback when something goes wrong, prefix the command with croncape. croncape will send an email to the address defined by the MAILTO environment variable. Don't forget to set it first via the following command:

$ symfony var:set [email protected]

Tip

The minimum interval between cron runs is 5 minutes, even if specified as less. Additionally, a variable delay is added to each cron job in each project in order to prevent host overloading when every project tries to run their nightly tasks at the same time. Your crons will not run exactly at the time that you specify, but will be delayed by 0-300 seconds.

Caution

Cron runs are executed using the dash shell, not the bash shell used by regular SSH sessions. In most cases that makes no differences but may impact some more involved cron scripts.

Note

If an application defines both a web instance and a worker instance, cron tasks will be run only on the web instance.

Tip

If you want to run a command in a cron hook for specific environments, check the SYMFONY_BRANCH environment variable:

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        crons:
    snapshot:
        spec: 0 5 * * *
        cmd: |
            # only run for the master branch, aka production
            if [ "$SYMFONY_BRANCH" = "master" ]; then
                croncape symfony ... --no-wait
            fi
    

Note

To ensure better reliability, by default croncape sends its emails using [email protected] as the sender address ([email protected] for non-master environments) and the provided SymfonyCloud SMTP service; even if you define your own MAILER_* environment variables.

If you wish to use a custom SMTP and/or use a custom sender address you need to follow these steps:

Define the sender address by defining the MAILFROM environment variable;
Define the environment variables required to use your own email service, refers to the email documentation to check their names. Please note that only SMTP connections are supported;
Disable the provided SMTP service using symfony env:setting:set smtp off

Running a Cron Manually

You can force a cron to run manually by running the cron command (it takes the cron name as an argument as specified in .symfony.cloud.yaml):

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        $ symfony cron update_doc
    

This work, including the code samples, is licensed under a Creative Commons BY-SA 3.0 license.