crond

A crontab-like runner using NPM cron package.

Oh, but why can't you just use crontab? What's this?

Well, I could. But maybe I want to run cronjobs on my phone or inside a container and I don't want to fiddle with the host file system. This is completely userland.

Install

npm i -g @cloud-cli/crond

Make sure the global NPM folder is part of $PATH.

Usage

• run crond to schedule jobs defined in the configuration file
• run crond -d or crond --daemon to detach from your shell (run in the background, like a daemon)
• the daemon writes a log to $CRON_LOGS_FOLDER/crond.log

Environment variables

name	description
CRON_LOGS_FOLDER	Path to a folder where logs will be placed per job. Default is /tmp/cronjobs
CRON_JOBS_FILE	Name of the JSON file where jobs are defined. Default is jobs.json
DEBUG	Set it to get debug logs from crond

Jobs file format

• Create jobs.json or jobs.yaml at either $HOME or the current folder.
• Each job can have one or more commands to execute.
• The current folder can be specified
• Interval follows the same syntax as crontab. Use https://crontab.guru/ to verify
• Give it a short name. This name is used to create the output log file.

jobs:
  - name: job-name
    interval: '0/5 * * *'
    cwd: /tmp/abc
    commands:
      - echo "Hello mom!"
      - cat file.txt
      - wget https://example.com

  - name: another-job-name
    interval: '0 0 * * *'
    cwd: /tmp/abc
    command: npm update

services:
  - name: http-server
    restart: true
    restartInterval: 5000
    cwd: /var/www
    command: node /opt/http.js

API

interface Job {
  name: string;
  interval: 'once' | string;
  cwd: string;
  command?: string;
  commands?: string[];
}

interface Service {
  name: string;
  command: string;
  restart?: boolean;
  restartInterval?: number;
  cwd?: string;
}