inanzzz | Handling cron jobs of symfony applications with capistrano deployment

If your symfony application depends on cron jobs, you can edit crontab when deploying your application with capistrano. Follow example below to see how it can be done. In this example, we're going to create and run a symfony console command with cronjob every 1 minute. Command will just write logs into a log file.

Application

Crontab structure

Setup environment specific crontab files.

# Structure
app
   config
        crontab
             production
             staging

Cron jobs

# app/config/crontab/production
# Every minute
* * * * *       cd /srv/www/football/current && php bin/console log:writer --message=Hello --iteration=2 --env=prod

# app/config/crontab/staging
# Every minute
* * * * *       cd /srv/www/football/current && php bin/console log:writer --message=Hello --iteration=2 --env=stag

LogWriterCommand

namespace Football\FrontendBundle\Command;

use Symfony\Component\Console\Command\Command;
use Symfony\Component\Console\Input\InputInterface;
use Symfony\Component\Console\Input\InputOption;
use Symfony\Component\Console\Output\OutputInterface;

class LogWriterCommand extends Command
{
    private $logPath;

    public function __construct($logPath)
    {
        parent::__construct();

        $this->logPath = $logPath;
    }

    protected function configure()
    {
        $this
            ->setName('log:writer')
            ->addOption('message', null, InputOption::VALUE_REQUIRED)
            ->addOption('iteration', null, InputOption::VALUE_REQUIRED);
    }

    protected function execute(InputInterface $input, OutputInterface $output)
    {
        for ($i = 1; $i <= $input->getOption('iteration'); $i++) {
            file_put_contents(
                $this->logPath,
                sprintf('%d: %s', $i, $input->getOption('message')).PHP_EOL,
                FILE_APPEND
            );
        }
    }
}

services:
    football_frontend.command.log_writer:
        class: Football\FrontendBundle\Command\LogWriterCommand
        tags:
            - { name: console.command }
        arguments:
            - '%kernel.logs_dir%/%kernel.environment%.log'

Deployment

deploy.rb

# deploy/deploy.rb

set :cron_path, "#{fetch(:app_config_path)}/crontab/"+fetch(:stage).to_s
after "deploy:cleanup", "application:crontab:setup"

namespace :application do
    namespace :crontab do
        desc "Sets up crontab"
        task :setup do
            on roles (:app) do
                puts "-" * 6
                puts "Setting up crontab"
                execute :crontab, "#{release_path}/#{fetch(:cron_path)}"
                puts "-" * 6
            end
        end
    end
end

Deploy

deploy:~# bundle exec cap staging deploy
...
------
Setting up crontab
00:09 application:crontab:setup
      01 crontab /srv/www/football/releases/20170430201939/app/config/crontab/staging
    ✔ 01 deployer@192.168.99.40 0.012s
------
...

deploy:~# bundle exec cap production deploy
...
------
Setting up crontab
00:09 application:crontab:setup
      01 crontab /srv/www/football/releases/20170430201939/app/config/crontab/staging
    ✔ 01 deployer@192.168.99.50 0.012s
------
...

Test

This is before you deploy your application.

staging:~#cat /srv/www/football/current/var/logs/stag.log
# Empty

staging:~# ls -l /var/spool/cron/crontabs/
total 0

This is after you deploying your application.

staging:~#cat /srv/www/football/current/var/logs/stag.log
1: Hello
2: Hello
1: Hello
2: Hello

staging:~# ls -l /var/spool/cron/crontabs/
-rw------- 1 deployer crontab 373 Apr 30 20:19 deployer

staging:~# crontab -e
# Every minute
* * * * *       cd /srv/www/football/current && php bin/console log:writer --message=Hello --iteration=2 --env=stag