How to create cronjobs with Laravel task schedules

Introduction

Laravel comes with a feature called Task Scheduling that allows you to code all your cronjobs inside of your project, this makes it easier to set up and manage since you no longer have to SSH into your web server and use that crontab file to add or edit your cronjobs.

You still need to

How to Setup

Create an example scheduled task

Create a new Laravel project, I’ve named it “laravel-schedule”.

composer create-project laravel/laravel laravel-schedule

Change the current directory into the new project.

cd laravel-schedule

Create a test command which will be used as an example to be used by the Schedule command.

php artisan make:command CheckSite

Go inside the app/Consoles/Commands directory and open the CheckSite.php file.

Copy and paste the following code below inside of that file.

<?php

namespace App\Console\Commands;

use Illuminate\Console\Command;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Http;

class CheckSite extends Command
{
    /**
     * The name and signature of the console command.
     *
     * @var string
     */
    protected $signature = 'app:check-site';

    /**
     * The console command description.
     *
     * @var string
     */
    protected $description = 'Command description';

    /**
     * Execute the console command.
     */
    public function handle()
    {
        $site = "https://www.google.com";
        $response = Http::get($site);

        if ($response->ok()) {
            $this->info("Response to $site was successful");
        } else {
            $this->fail("Can't connect to $site");
        }
    }
}

The above command uses the Laravel HTTP client to send a request to the website https://www.google.com, once a response is received the status code is checked to see if it's a success status code by using the ok command. If the response is successful a message stating so will be returned, if not then an error message will be returned.

Now a task schedule will be created which will act as a cronjob command that will run the CheckSite command.

Go to the routes folder and then open the console.php file, you will see the following code inside of that file.

<?php

use Illuminate\Foundation\Inspiring;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Artisan;

Artisan::command('inspire', function () {
    $this->comment(Inspiring::quote());
})->purpose('Display an inspiring quote')->hourly();

Use the artisan schedule list command to view the current list of schedules and you will see the inspire and its cronjob schedule time.

php artisan schedule:list

Inside of the console.php file, at the top of the file add a use statement for the Schedule facade class.

use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Schedule;

Use the Schedule facade to call the command function with the command name as a parameter, this schedule will be set to run once a day with a call to the daily method.

You can find the full list of frequency methods on the official Laravel documentation website.

Schedule::command('app:check-site')->daily();

Now re-call the artisan schedule list command you will see the new check site schedule in the list that was added.

php artisan schedule:list

Test a scheduled task locally

You can test your scheduled tasks by using the artisan schedule work command.

Go to the console.php file and update the check site task schedule to run every 10 seconds by using the everyTenSeconds method.

Schedule::command('app:check-site')->everyTenSeconds();

Now run the schedule work command and you will see output representing the check site command.

php artisan schedule:work

Add task hooks to schedule

You can use hooks that get called depending on whether the scheduled task succeeds or fails.

Open the console.php file and add the following class references to the top of the file.

use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Log;
use Illuminate\Support\Stringable;

Update the check site task schedule with the following calls to the onSuccess and onFailure hook calls. Both of these task hooks will get the response of the task schedule call and add it to the log file.

Schedule::command('app:check-site')
        ->everyTenSeconds()
        ->onSuccess(function (Stringable $output) {
             Log::info($output);
        })
        ->onFailure(function (Stringable $output) {
            Log::error($output);
        });

Stop and start the call to the schedule work command and you will see the log file getting updated.

Open the laravel.log file located inside of the storage/logs directory and you should see output like the following…

[2024-11-11 21:10:00] local.INFO: Response to https://www.google.com was successful
[2024-11-11 21:10:10] local.INFO: Response to https://www.google.com was successful
[2024-11-11 21:10:20] local.INFO: Response to https://www.google.com was successful

Running schedules on a web server

You won’t be able to use the artisan schedule work command on a web server so you would have to update the crontab on the web server and add an entry to run a cronjob call every minute.

This guide will be applicable for Linux servers since those are used the most for website development.

Once you have logged onto your web server using SSH connection use the crontab command with the edit flag to open and edit the file.

crontab -e

Copy the below command and replace the [FULL FILE PATH TO LARAVEL PROJECT] text with the actual file path then paste this test into the crontab file, save the crontab file and then exit.

* * * * * cd [FULL FILE PATH TO LARAVEL PROJECT] && php artisan schedule:run >> /dev/null 2>&1

All the scheduled tasks defined inside the routes/console.php will now be run at the frequencies that you’ve set.

Handling code deployments

When you deploy code changes to your Laravel project then all existing scheduled tasks that are set to run won’t use your new code.

Use the below artisan schedule interrupt command by calling it after you’ve deployed to enable tasks to use the new code.

php artisan schedule:interrupt

Conclusion

Once you reach this point you are now capable of using your existing Laravel project to set up cronjobs as scheduled tasks inside of your project making it easier to manage which saves you the hassle of having to connect to your web server to check or update your cronjobs.

Task schedules also allow you to use all the features available in Laravel in conjunction with scheduled tasks such as updating the database after a scheduled task has finished running.