如何在C＃MVC Web应用程序中发生定期事件？

Question

I have a web app that I'm writing right now that is supposed to have "periodical events". For instance, at midnight, the web app should calculate "scores" for all users. I want this done only once during the day. Is there a way that I can automate this, so it runs automatically at midnight (or whatever hour I choose)?

I don't like the idea of creating a separate script (VBS) to do this, as the calculation would depend on a lot of business logic of the app. I was thinking to put it into a separate Class Library, so it can use the web app logic (which is also in a class library), but is this the best way to go about it? I also don't like the idea of using the Session_Start() event in the Global.asax to trigger the event by checking the hour manually. There must be some easier way - especially because down the road I expect there will be a lot more of periodical events - some may have to be triggered every fifteen minutes, for example ...

Thanks a lot for any help you can give me.

Answer 1

You should not do this in the web app itself. You are correct to put the business logic in a separate library. Once you have done this, you can use the business logic from anywhere, and therefore, a good solution would be to create a console application that does the nightly jobs, and invoke the console application from Windows Task Scheduler. IIS is not suitable as a host for periodical events.

Answer 2

Yeah... again awesome "change your architecture and hosting environment so that my answer can be relevant" responses.

Doing what you ask is actually quite easy, take a look at this article: http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/12117/Simulate-a-Windows-Service-using-ASP-NET-to-run-sc

Answer 3

I guess you are missing the point of separation of concern. Whatever you are asking is a job of a service . You need to develop a separate application as Windows Service that will do all your calculation and to be triggered by any scheduler even Windows Task Scheduler would do. This is what basically done on large scale applications.

Answer 4

This is a job for a windows service or scheduled task. A web application responds to HTTP requests. Essentially the service's job would be to wake up, run the appropriate calculations and write back to the database. Once in the database, your web application can use the newly calculated values.

Here is some information on windows services: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/d56de412.aspx