knock:on_wood

Many Rails app need to make use of cron in some form or fashion. Whenever is a great little DSL for creating, organizing, managing, and deploying your app related cron jobs.

Here’s an example from the wiki. You simply install the gem and run wheneverize in your root dir. Then add the following to your config/schedule.rb file:

set :path, "/var/www/apps/my_app" 

every 10.minutes do
  runner "MyModel.some_process" 
  rake "my:rake:task"  
  command "/usr/bin/my_great_command" 
end

will yield…

0,10,20,30,40,50 * * * * /var/www/apps/my_app/script/runner -e production "MyModel.some_process" 

0,10,20,30,40,50 * * * * cd /var/www/apps/my_app && RAILS_ENV=production /usr/bin/env rake my:rake:task

0,10,20,30,40,50 * * * * /usr/bin/my_great_command

For more on setup and deployment, see the README. RubyInside has a nice review as well.