Create cronjob with Zend Framework

Question

I am trying to write a cronjob controller, so I can call one website and have all modules cronjob.php executed. Now my problem is how do I do that?

Would curl be an

Answer 1

After some research and a lot procrastination I came to the simple conclusion that a ZF-ized cron script should contain all the functionality of you zend framework app - without all the view stuff. I accomplished this by creating a new cronjobfoo.php file in my application directory. Then I took the bare minimum from: -my front controller (index.php) -my bootstrap.php

I took out all the view stuff and focused on keeping the environment setup, db setup, autoloader, & registry setup. I had to take a little time to correct the document root variable and remove some of the OO functionality copied from my bootstrap.

After that I just coded away.. in my case it was compiling and emailing out nightly reports. It was great to use Zend_Mail. When I was confident that my script was working the way I wanted, I just added it my crontab.

good luck!

Answer 2

I would caution putting your cronjobs accessible to the public because they could be triggered outside their normal times and, depending on what they do, cause problems (I know that is not what you intend, but by putting them into an actual controller it becomes reachable from the browser). For example, I have one cron that sends e-mails. I would be spammed constantly if someone found the cron URL and just began hitting it.

What I did was make a cron folder and in there created a heartbeat.php which bootstraps Zend Framework (minus MVC) for me. It checks a database which has a list of all the installed cron jobs and, if it is time for them to run, generates an instances of the cron job's class and runs it.

The cron jobs are just child classes from an abstract cron class that has methods like install(), run(), deactivate(), etc.

To fire off my job I just have a simple crontab entry that runs every 5 minutes that hits heartbeat.php. So far it's worked wonderful on two different sites.

Answer 3

For Zend Framework I am currently using the code outlined bellow. The script only includes the portal file index.php, where all the paths, environment and other Zendy code is bootstrapped. By defining a constant in the cron script we cancel the final step , where the application is run.

This means the application is only setup, not even bootstrapped. At this point we start bootstraping the resources we need and that is that

//public/index.php

if(!defined('DONT_RUN_APP') || DONT_RUN_APP == false) {  
    $application->bootstrap()->run();
}

// application/../cron/cronjob.php

define("DONT_RUN_APP",true);
require(realpath('/srv/www/project/public/index.php'));
$application->bootstrap('config');
$application->bootstrap('db');

//cron code follows

Answer 4

Do you have filesystem access to the modules' directories? You could iterate over the directories and determine where a CronjobController.php is available. Then you could either use Zend_Http_Client to access the controller via HTTP or use an approach like Zend_Test_PHPUnit: simulate the actual dispatch process locally.

Answer 5

My solution:

• curl /cron
• Global cron method will include_once all controllers
• Check whether each of the controllors has ->cron method
• If they have, run those.

Public cron url (for curl) is not a problem, there are many ways to avoid abuse. As said, checking remote IP is the easiest.

Answer 6

Take a look at zf-cli:

• scripts at master from padraic/ZFPlanet - GitHub

This handles well all cron jobs.