Cron Jobs Setup for Web Application

Cron Tasks Setup for Web Application

Cron tasks run code on schedule: cleanup of stale data, digest emails, report generation, cache updates. Main challenge during setup is preventing parallel execution of the same task and ensuring execution monitoring.

Laravel Task Scheduling

// app/Console/Kernel.php
protected function schedule(Schedule $schedule): void
{
    // Daily digest at 9:00 Moscow time
    $schedule->job(SendDailyDigestJob::class)
        ->dailyAt('09:00')
        ->timezone('Europe/Moscow')
        ->withoutOverlapping()      // don't run if previous is still executing
        ->onOneServer()             // only on one server with horizontal scaling
        ->runInBackground();

    // Cleanup stale sessions — every hour
    $schedule->command('sessions:cleanup')
        ->hourly()
        ->withoutOverlapping(5)     // max 5 minutes overlap
        ->appendOutputTo(storage_path('logs/sessions-cleanup.log'));

    // Check notifications queue every minute
    $schedule->command('notifications:send-pending')
        ->everyMinute()
        ->runInBackground()
        ->skip(fn() => !config('features.notifications'));

    // Weekly report on Mondays at 8:00
    $schedule->job(WeeklyReportJob::class)
        ->weekly()
        ->mondays()
        ->at('08:00');
}

# Crontab: run scheduler every minute
* * * * * cd /var/www/myapp && php artisan schedule:run >> /dev/null 2>&1

Node.js: node-cron

import cron from 'node-cron';
import { db } from './database';
import { emailService } from './services/email';

// Daily cleanup at 3:00
cron.schedule('0 3 * * *', async () => {
  const lock = await acquireLock('cleanup-expired-tokens');
  if (!lock) return;  // another instance already executing

  try {
    const deleted = await db.query(
      'DELETE FROM password_reset_tokens WHERE expires_at < NOW()'
    );
    console.log(`Cleaned ${deleted.rowCount} expired tokens`);
  } finally {
    await releaseLock('cleanup-expired-tokens');
  }
}, { timezone: 'Europe/Moscow' });

// Every 5 minutes: update exchange rates
cron.schedule('*/5 * * * *', async () => {
  try {
    const rates = await fetchExchangeRates();
    await cache.set('exchange_rates', rates, 300);
  } catch (err) {
    console.error('Exchange rates update failed:', err);
  }
});

Distributed Lock via Redis (prevent duplication)

// For Laravel: standard Cache::lock()
$schedule->call(function () {
    $lock = Cache::lock('daily-digest', 3600);

    if (!$lock->get()) {
        return;  // another server already executing
    }

    try {
        app(DigestService::class)->sendAll();
    } finally {
        $lock->release();
    }
})->dailyAt('09:00')->onOneServer();

Monitoring: Healthchecks.io / Laravel Health

# Crontab with ping notification
* * * * * cd /var/www/myapp && php artisan schedule:run \
  && curl -fsS https://hc-ping.com/YOUR-UUID > /dev/null 2>&1

// Notification on scheduler error
$schedule->job(SendDailyDigestJob::class)
    ->dailyAt('09:00')
    ->pingOnSuccess('https://hc-ping.com/success-uuid')
    ->pingOnFailure('https://hc-ping.com/fail-uuid')
    ->emailOutputOnFailure('[email protected]');

Implementation timeline

Setup cron schedule for Laravel or Node.js application: 1 day. With distributed lock, execution monitoring and alerts: 2 days.