Agenda

Agenda is a light-weight job scheduling library for Node.js.

It offers:

• Minimal overhead. Agenda aims to keep its code base small.
• Mongo backed persistance layer.
• Scheduling with priority, repeating, and easily readable syntax.

Installation

Install via NPM

npm install agenda

Example Usage

var agenda = new Agenda({db: { address: 'localhost:27017/agenda-example'}});

agenda.define('delete old users', function(job, done) {
  User.remove({lastLogIn: { $lt: twoDaysAgo }}, done);
});

agenda.every('3 minutes', 'delete old users');

agenda.start();

agenda.define('send email report', {priority: 'high', concurrency: 10}, function(job, done) {
  var data = job.attrs.data;
  emailClient.send({ 
    to: data.to,
    from: 'example@example.com',
    subject: 'Email Report',
    body: '...'
  }, done);
});

agenda.schedule('in 20 minutes', 'send email report', {to: 'admin@example.com'});
agenda.start();

var weeklyReport = agenda.schedule('Saturday at noon', 'send email report', {to: 'another-guy@example.com'});
weeklyReport.repeatEvery('1 week').save();
agenda.start();

Full documentation

Agenda's basic control structure is an instance of an agenda. Agenda's are mapped to a database collection and load the jobs from within.

Table of Contents

• Configuring an agenda
• Defining job processors
• Creating jobs
• Starting the job processor
• Manually working with jobs
• Frequently asked questions

Configuring an agenda

All configuration methods are chainable, meaning you can do something like:

var agenda = new Agenda();
agenda
  .database(...)
  .processEvery('3 minutes')
  ...;

database(url, [collectionName])

Specifies the database at the url specified. If no collection name is give, agendaJobs is used.

agenda.database('localhost:27017/agenda-test', 'agendaJobs');

You can also specify it during instantiation.

var agenda = new Agenda({db: { address: 'localhost:27017/agenda-test', collection: 'agendaJobs' }});

processEvery(interval)

Takes a string interval which can be either a traditional javascript number, or a string such as 3 minutes

Specifies the frequency at which agenda will query the database looking for jobs that need to be processed. If your jobs are time sensitive, you will want to specify a low value.

agenda.processEvery('1 minute');

You can also specify it during instantiation

var agenda = new Agenda({processEvery: '30 seconds'});

maxConcurrency(number)

Takes a number which specifies the max number of jobs that can be running at any given moment. By default it is 20.

agenda.maxConcurrency(20);

You can also specify it during instantiation

var agenda = new Agenda({maxConcurrency: 20});

defaultConcurrency(number)

Takes a number which specifies the default number of a specific that can be running at any given moment. By default it is 5.

agenda.defaultConcurrency(5);

You can also specify it during instantiation

var agenda = new Agenda({defaultConcurrency: 5});

Defining Job Processors

Before you can use a job, you must define its processing behavior.

define(jobName, [options], fn)

Defines a job with the name of jobName. When a job of job name gets run, it will be passed to fn(job, done). To maintain asynchronous behavior, you must call done() when you are processing the job.

options is an optional argument which can overwrite the defaults. It can take the following:

• concurrency: number maxinum number of that job that can be running at once
• priority: (lowest|low|normal|high|highest|number) specifies the priority of the job. Higher priority jobs will run first. See the priority mapping below

Priority mapping:

{
  highest: 20,
  high: 10,
  default: 0,
  low: -10,
  lowest: -20
}

agenda.define('some long running job', function(job, done) {
  doSomelengthyTask(function(data) {
    formatThatData(data);
    sendThatData(data);
    done();
  });
});

Creating Jobs

every(interval, name, [data])

Runs job name at the given interval. Optionally, data can be passed in. Every creates a job of type single, which means that it will only create one job in the database, even if that line is run multiple times. This lets you put it in a file that may get run multiple times, such as webserver.js which may reboot from time to time.

data is an optional argument that will be passed to the processing function under job.data.

Returns the job.

agenda.define('printAnalyticsReport', function(job, done) {
  User.doSomethingReallyIntensive(function(err, users) {
    processUserData();
    console.log("I print a report!");
    done();
  });
});

agenda.every('15 minutes', 'printAnalyticsReport');

schedule(when, name, data)

Schedules a job to run name once at a given time. when can be a Date or a String such as tomorrow at 5pm.

data is an optional argument that will be passed to the processing function under job.data.

Returns the job.

agenda.schedule('tomorrow at noon', 'printAnalyticsReport', {userCount: 100});

create(jobName, data)

Returns an instance of a jobName with data. This does NOT save the job in the database. See below to learn how to manually work with jobs.

var job = agenda.create('printAnalyticsReport', {userCount: 100});
job.save();

Starting the job processor

To get agenda to start processing jobs from the database you must start it. This will schedule an interval (based on processEvery) to check for new jobs and run them. You can also stop the queue.

start

Starts the job queue processing, checking processEvery time to see if there are new jobs.

stop

Stops the job queue processing.

Manually working with a job

A job instance has many instance methods. All mutating methods must be followed with a call to job.save() in order to persist the changes to the database.

repeatEvery(interval)

Specifies an interval on which the job should repeat.

job.repeatEvery('10 minutes');
job.save();

schedule(time)

Specifies the next time at which the job should repeat.

job.schedule('tomorrow at 6pm');
job.save();

priority(priority)

Specifies the priority weighting of the job. Can be a number or a string from the above priority table.

job.priority('low');
job.save();

fail(reason)

Sets job.attrs.failedAt to now, and sets job.attrs.failReason to reason.

job.fail('insuficient disk space');
job.save();

run(callback)

Runs the given job and calls callback(err, job) upon completion. Normally you never need to call this manually.

job.run(function(err, job) {
  console.log("I don't know why you would need to do this...");
});

save(callback)

Saves the job.attrs into the database.

job.save()

Frequently Asked Questions

Mongo vs Redis

The decision to use Mongo instead of Redis is intentional. Redis is often used for non-essential data (such as sessions) and without configuration doesn't guarantee the same level of persistence as Mongo (should the server need to be restarted/crash).

Agenda decides to focus on persistence without requiring special configuration of Redis (thereby degrading the performance of the Redis server on non-critical data, such as sessions).

Ultimately if enough people want a Redis driver instead of Mongo, I will write one. (Please open an issue requesting it). For now, Agenda decided to focus on guaranteed persistence.

License

(The MIT License)

Copyright (c) 2013 Ryan Schmukler ryan@slingingcode.com

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the 'Software'), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED 'AS IS', WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.