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Options for running cron job? #146
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What happen if my process crashes after |
Since
The old instance of the app will just keep running as long as people are accessing it. If nobody accesses it, it will fall into a light sleep and |
Thanks @leo but It looks like it's not good replacement for cron job. Btw, why did you closed this issue? As it is, there's no solution for this problem yet. |
@ranyefet You should be able to write the code so that If you need an interface that looks more like the one of regular CronJobs, you can use modules like node-cron (there are hundreds of these on npm). |
@OlliV Ummm... If we add support for CronJobs waking up deployments, I don't think there would be a reason to keep the "fall into a light sleep" feature alive at all, because everyone will set CronJobs to prevent the deployment from falling asleep. So IMHO, I don't think there's anything else we can do (because killing this sleep feature would result in a heavy perf impact from old/unused deployments)... 🤔 |
So to clarify, if I deploy an app that's only function is a scheduled job, it will go into "light sleep" after a few hours and never come out again? I would like to host an app that's only purpose is interacting with Firebase and Stripe at a scheduled time each day. Does a response qualify as incoming traffic? Or is there no way to accomplish this with the current state of now? |
something like this: https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/scheduled-jobs-custom-clock-processes would be very helpful. |
Let's suppose I just want to create a simple social network bot. A few crons per day, that's it. |
@leo there's some middle ground here though right? ie no- or limited-sleep on any instance w/ an active alias pointed to it? as it stands the next best option for low-friction scheduled tasks is AWS Lambda, and that's considerably more annoying to configure than |
I would love to see the ability to create a service where I can schedule it to wake up and run a job every x amount hours, days, etc. The interface for this could be described in the The interface for this might look like so: {
now: {
schedule: `${ANY VALID CRON STRING}`
}
} EDIT: You could also create these services without an accessible url, so after they cleanly exit you can put them to sleep again because they don't listen for incoming connections |
We do plan to add some kind of cron jobs support – no ETA for now tho! |
it looks like the 'light sleep' can be prevented by setting a deployment's I didn't know about this feature, but it looks like it's a few months old If I run a cron job on a server w/ a min |
Not associated with Azure or anything but I had to recently monitor timeline at set intervals since the Webhook based Twitter API is still in Beta and not available publicly. After sometime I went with Google Cloud Functions because of their generous plans and other services with free tiers such as Google Cloud DataStore but I also wanted Cron jobs which is not natively supported by Cloud Functions as of now. Luckily, Azure provides this service with again a very generous plan, you can set up crons to run with it, and it works like BAM! It's known as Time Trigger for Azure Functions |
I just found this issue after running into the exact situation yesterday. I chose to go with AWS Lambda functions. Here's a good guide to get started. I also think it'd be nice to be able to do with @matheuss @leo any update on this? Will @brandonmp's suggestion of using |
yeah serverless functions are attractive for this, i just wish they ran a later version of node. I don't want to write promise/callback code like some kinda caveperson, but transpilation for simple scripts seems too cumbersome. |
@pranaygp I think Azure Timer Functions are more user friendly. AWS also has this limit of maximum 500 timer functions like what if I need to run 501 crons. Another really useful thing to do will be to use Google Cloud Pub/Sub and invoke the functions using the Pub/Sub events, it's faster and more secure than using just HTTPS and can be used to run multiple functions with just one event, CRAZIEST THING EVER. However, if Zeit builds support for it natively, I don't see any reason to go to other places for my tiny pity hacks. @brandonmp Azure plans to support new versions very soon. But last time I used Firebase Functions which are built on the top of Google Cloud Functions I could use async/await without any problems. However, babel-env makes transpilation process very easy. You should try it out sometime. It's just a one or two npm installs. |
It seems it should be possible:
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Another way to do it is to |
@Zertz how exactly do you write your cron app? cause mine will just timeout at the deploy as it stays in the cron process. |
Good point, you need to setup a dummy server for it to stay awake.
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I'm getting this error, seems like there is no way to set a min number of running instances.
UPD: I switched to |
Yes but that only allows running cron jobs through CloudWatch which have a max of every 5 minutes. I was thinking more like node-cron where I can run events every second. |
We can use Google Cloud Scheduler in the interim (3 free jobs/month). |
Thank you for creating this issue! Please note that – in order for us to be able to handle each feature request with care – we have to consume all of them through a unified pipeline that makes it easier for us to prioritize, track and progress on the features our user base is interested in. In turn, the Issues tab on this repository is best only be used for reporting bugs, which we can immediately act on. For well-explained feature requests (like the one you just posted), please contact us at support@zeit.co, so that we can consider adding it to our roadmap. In the case of your specific feature recommendation, you can rest assured that we're already tracking it on our roadmap and you can expect to see an update on our Twitter account or Blog soon. |
Looks like Leo's closing a lot of issues lately, which haven't resulted into any solution :( |
This is super annoying. Every time I deploy my V1 instance I get a bunch of warnings screaming at me about V2 but I can't upgrade without a way to handle this. It's made worse by the fact that the only communication from the team about this has been to close the issue! Similar lack of information here: https://spectrum.chat/zeit/general/in-v2-how-can-you-keep-a-node-server-cron-job-alive~18dc0165-507f-4d1e-874a-77d0bbafe20a?authed=true |
Can't we just use an "uptime monitoring" or "ping" service to achieve cron jobs with any serverless function?
I'm planning to try this soon and will let you know if anything goes astray. |
I've been using https://easycron.com for actual "serverless" crons and it's been going very well, I assume it could work similarly. |
So if I understand this right, I can use something like node-cron with now, as long as I make sure the now server doesn't sleep? |
@ankerbachryhl you could do that with now V1. But that is being deprecated. |
I have been chatting to the Zeit team about this recently as it's a blocker for me moving to v2. I don't really want to use another 3rd party vendor to do something I could previously do with some node cron code. Their official response was this:
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@danhollick Thank you for your response. I guess I have to give up on now :/ So far I've been using a Heroku hobby server which actually works fine for the time giving, but must admit I would rather use now. |
@danhollick GitHub Actions support running jobs on schedule, could be a solution for this. I have an example setup executes hourly as a http trigger. If the job is simple enough, you may even execute it right within GitHub Action, just be careful not to violate these usage limitations. |
@amio thanks for the info. Currently use Gitlab for my repo, but could move it over if this is the way I want to go. |
I think a lot of the posts here are focusing on keeping the process alive to run a
The case for this, to me, is that you don't have to make your API endpoint public just so some external service can ping it periodically. I understand this might be out of scope for what now is intended to be, but a lot of websites can benefit from daily deleting stuff from the database, sending out some report to slack, periodically refreshing some data, etc. |
Hello, For example I want a cron job that triggers a serverless function (every few hours or even every day) in order to do a check on our bank api and see if our clients have made their deposits. That feature would be amazing, since we could just rely Thanks |
I think the important thing to realize here is free plan cost and it's availability. If "always on" is the only way to run free version, it may not remain free any more. So let's be mindful and keep the actual economics in mind. |
The option already exists via a connection with Google Cloud. Sure, I really appreciate the fact that a Free plan even exists! You cannot build apps -or at least complex ones- without a cron Update: |
Based on this thread I will not be using Now for a client's project that requires scheduling reminder notifications to users. Was hoping there's be a built in way to schedule events to trigger serverless endpoints. Pretty disappointed. Hopefully this is resolved soon! The workarounds above seem a little unreasonable - having severless functions with their own cron sounds like it defeats the point of going serverless (even if they do sleep), and using a third party service to trigger the functions sounds like I should just use a third party service. I still love the stuff the Zeit does, hopefully I'll have the opportunity to use Now for my next project! |
I've come to the realization, that you can use AWS lambda function as crons. They provide a schedule option, so it's the perfect solution for me (cost-efficient, performant, flexible in its programming language, etc.). I am not even sure I would use Zeit cronjobs, even if they introduced them. |
Is there any official guided solutions for creating cron jobs?
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Strong and free solution: https://pipedream.com |
@redstrike No affiliation here, but https://easycron.com is very inexpensive. Starting at $12 / year enables you to do a lot with If setting up a simple @now/node and hitting it with easycron seems complicated, you might want to consider using a more "integrated" workflow builder like https://zapier.com where you can run some code at a schedule. |
Another alternative to EasyCron I've been using (for crons that need to run less frequently than hourly) is GitHub Actions. I wrote about it here: https://news.brn.sh/using-github-actions-as-a-web-cron |
You can also use Cloud Scheduler from the GCloud integration on Vercel Marketplace : https://vercel.com/integrations/gcloud |
Idk guys, I think it’s mean to break resource optimization by such an abuse. I mean for what? If it appears your app doesn’t have enough visitors, - maybe such a slight improvement won’t make difference? I mean, it’s not Heroku, where frozen->warm translation required almost a minute or so, so even for “just first” visitor it was huge, too unpleasant. Here it’s 100ms, even less. You’re not making game servers, right? |
Ok, let's settle this. We do not want to ping our app and keep it alive. We don't want to abuse the platform. A serverless function is a process with a begining and an end, designed to run for a few milliseconds and then exit. Most implementations mentioned here feel awkward at best. Especially GCP for Vercel that allows you to choose a SPECIFIC deployment for Cron. This is very impractical, since with my rate of deployments, I would need to change this setting every 5 hours or so. Anyhow, we know CRONaaS exists and most of us use it (myself included). Having it hardcoded in your app though or being able to manage everything from one place is a whole different thing (feels more stable and "correct") - besides as I have said in a previous post, most FaaS providers have a cron functionality, because most people don't want to mess with statefull servers and want to enjoy the stability, flexibility and low-cost of serverless. AWS for example - the service behind Vercel Serverless - already provides this. |
We've added a new section to the docs with cron job recommendations! |
Hey,
What are the options for running Cron jobs?
I'm building a chat bot and I need a way to send messages not on the req/res cycle.
Do you have a plan to add support for cron jobs?
If not do you have a suggestion for workaround? alternative services?
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