我的cronjobs应该放在哪里？

Question

Is there a special place for cronjobs in rails? I couldn't find information on this subject, the only examples out there are to execute Model.some_method

I created a class Crawler, with a method run, and tried different places for it (including app/models), but I keep getting this error:

$ rails runner -e development 'Crawler.run'

/usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/railties-3.2.1/lib/rails/commands/runner.rb:53: undefined method `run' for Crawler:Class (NoMethodError)

 from /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/railties-3.2.1/lib/rails/commands.rb:64:in `eval' from /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/railties-3.2.1/lib/rails/commands/runner.rb:53 from /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/railties-3.2.1/lib/rails/commands.rb:64:in `require' from /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/railties-3.2.1/lib/rails/commands.rb:64 from script/rails:6:in `require' from script/rails:6 

class Crawler
  def run
    puts 'bla'
  end
end

As you can see, it can't find the method 'run'.

If I put it inside /scripts I get this: uninitialized constant Crawler (NameError), so this is probably not what I want.

Any ideas?

note. I'm on rails 3

Answer 1

You're calling an instance method on class level.

Rewrite like this:

class Crawler
  def self.run
    puts 'bla'
  end
end

To answer your initial question, there is no real dedicated place but I usually create a crons folder under app .

Regarding rake tasks, they are supposed to live in /lib but it's really up to you.

Answer 2

I encourage you to use the whenever gem . It allows you to set up tasks in a schedule.rb file as follows:

every 3.hours do
  runner "MyModel.some_process"       
  rake "my:rake:task"                 
  command "/usr/bin/my_great_command"
end