Automation and cron

One entry point#

All automation starts from cron.php, run every five minutes by a cron job or a web cron. Each run decides which tasks are due: frequent tasks every time or every few minutes, hourly ones once an hour, and the daily run once a day at the hour set under Automation Settings.

Running tasks yourself#

Every task can be run by hand from Utilities > Automation Status, and from the shell with the command line tools; see the command line page for the list.

Your own background work#

An add-on module listens to the tick event, which fires on every cron run. Keep each tick short: do a batch of queued work and leave the rest for the next one. A module that needs a schedule of its own keeps the time of its last run in its settings with saveConf() and checks it in tick.

public function events(): array
{
    return ['tick' => 'onTick'];
}

public function onTick(array $data): void
{
    if ((int) $this->conf('last_sync', 0) > time() - 3600) {
        return; // hourly
    }
    // ... sync a batch ...
    $this->saveConf(['last_sync' => time()]);
}

Reacting to changes#

For work that follows a change, such as telling another system that a client changed their email, listen to the matching event (client.updated, invoice.created and so on) and queue the work for tick. See hooks and events.

Calling CoreInto from outside#

Systems outside CoreInto use the API with a credential limited to the scopes they need.