Scheduler module

The Magnolia Scheduler module allows you to schedule commands to run at regularly scheduled times and is powered by the Quartz Engine.

Download

The Scheduler module is bundled with Magnolia and typically already installed. You can download it from our Nexus repository

Installing

Scheduler is a Community Edition module. It is typically already installed. Launch the Configuration app and go to /modules/scheduler to check.

Uninstalling

Usage

The Scheduler module can be used to execute any configured command at regular intervals. For example, it could be used to:

• Activate or deactivate a promotional web page on a specific date.
• Import content from an external source into a Magnolia workspace.
• Send emails on specific days.
• Delete specified forum messages or threads.
• Synchronize target and source instances.
• Execute a custom command.

Configuration

The Scheduler module is used to execute commands that are typically configured in other modules. See Commands for more information on configuring commands.

The scheduled tasks are configured in modules/scheduler/config/jobs. The example demo configuration can be adapted to set up your own scheduled jobs.

Properties:

• params: Parameters passed to the command. Depends on the command. For example, the activate command expects to receive a repository name and a content path, and the generatePlanetData command used by the RSS Aggregator module, expects only a repository parameter.
  
  • path: Content path to the item that the command should use.
  • repository: Workspace where the content item resides
• active: Enables (true) and disables (false) the job.
• catalog: Name of the catalog where the command resides
• command: Name of the command
• cron: CRON expression that sets the scheduled execution time. For example 0 0 1 5 11 ? 2010 means "run on November 5th, 2010 at 01:00 am" (as opposed to 0 0 1 5 11 ? * which will run annually on "Nov 5th at 01:00 am") . Cronmaker is a useful tool for building expressions
• description: Description of the job

Scheduling tasks on cluster nodes

In a clustered configuration one or more workspaces is stored in a shared, clustered storage. See Clustering for more information. Cluster nodes (Magnolia instances) access the clustered workspace rather than their own workspaces. This can lead to a situation where multiple scheduled jobs attempt to access the same content simultaneously and a lockup occurs. To avoid this situation, identify the cluster nodes and run the job on only one node.

1. Set the magnolia.clusterid property in the magnolia.properties file of the cluster node. The file is in the /<CATALINA_HOME>/webapps/<contextPath>/WEB-INF/config/default folder. The property value can be a literal cluster name such as public123 (magnolia.clusterid=public123) or a variable such as ${servername}.
2. To configure the job to run on the identified cluster node, go to Configuration >/modules/scheduler/jobs and edit the job configuration.

3. Under the params node, add a clusterId property and set the value to match the magnolia.clusterId of the cluster node where you want to run the job.

   Node name	Value
   scheduler
   config
   jobs
   demo
   params
   clusterID	cluster1
   path	/news
   repository	website
   active	false
   ....	....