sails-hook-node-cron

Sails hook for running cron tasks using node-cron.

Getting Started

This is a SailsJS's hook for cron jobs using node-cron. The difference between this package and another popular SailsJS's cron hook, sails-hook-cron is that sails-hook-cron uses the cron package whereas this sails-hook-node-cron uses the node-cron as a main package to run cron jobs.

I prefer node-cron package as a cron jobs runner, because node-cron uses a pure javascript code (setTimeout) to run a scheduled task whereas cron package uses child_process for spwan command. Using child_process may cause an injection vulnerability. I prefer not to use a command injection if possible, especially from 3rd party packages. Also if you are running multiple cron jobs, using spawned child_process may use more memory for the server. So for the efficiency and security reasons, I have created this new cron hook package for SailsJS. Happy Coding!

If you are switching from sails-hook-cron package, you will see that the parameter fields are similar with sails-hook-cron. You should be able to simply change the package without rewriting the cron configuration.

Installation

npm install sails-hook-node-cron --save

Configure config/cron.js in your project:

module.exports.cron = {
  myFirstJob: {
    schedule: '* * * * * *',      // [REQUIRED]
    onTick: () => {               // [REQUIRED]
      console.log('You will see this every second');
    },
    timezone: 'America/New_York', // [OPTIONAL] set timezone
    runOnInit: true,              // [OPTIONAL] fire onTick function as soon as the cron is initialized
    start: true                   // [OPTIONAL] manually start the cron task (DEFAULT = true) See below for the example
  }
};

Cron Syntax

This is a quick reference to cron syntax and also shows the options supported by node-cron.

https://crontab.guru/ or https://cronjob.xyz/ might be useful to validate the cron schedule. Please note that these sites may not accept the SECOND field so you can you them as reference but you should check your run result after.

Allowed fields

 # ┌────────────── second (optional)
 # │ ┌──────────── minute
 # │ │ ┌────────── hour
 # │ │ │ ┌──────── day of month
 # │ │ │ │ ┌────── month
 # │ │ │ │ │ ┌──── day of week
 # │ │ │ │ │ │
 # │ │ │ │ │ │
 # * * * * * *

Allowed values

| field | value | |--------------|---------------------| | second | 0-59 | | minute | 0-59 | | hour | 0-23 | | day of month | 1-31 | | month | 1-12 (or names) | | day of week | 0-7 (or names, 0 or 7 are sunday) |

Examples

You can create a cronjob and start\stop them manually:

// config/cron.js
module.exports.cron = {
  myJob: {
    schedule: '* * * * * *',
    onTick: () => {
      console.log('schedule task');
    },
    start: false
  }
};

// api/controllers/SomeController.js
module.exports = {
  someAction: function(req, res) {
    sails.hooks.cron.jobs.myJob.start();
    sails.hooks.cron.jobs.myJob.stop();
    sails.hooks.cron.jobs.myJob.destroy();
  }
};

License

MIT