Best way to run scheduled tasks [closed]

Question

Today we have built a console application for running the scheduled tasks for our ASP.NET website. But I think this approach is a bit error prone and difficult to maintain. How do you execute your scheduled task (in an windows/IIS/ASP.NET environment)

Update:

Examples of tasks:

• Sending email from an email-queue in the database
• Removing outdated objects from the database
• Retrieving stats from Google AdWords and fill a table in the database.

Answer 1

I've found this to be easy for all involved:

• Create a webservice method such as DoSuchAndSuchProcess
• Create a console app that calls this webmethod.
• Schedule the console app in the task scheduler.

Using this methodology all of the business logic is contained in your web app, but you have the reliability of the windows task manager, or any other commercial task manager to kick it off and record any return information such as an execution report. Using a web service instead of posting to a page has a bit of an advantage because it's easier to get return data from a webservice.

Answer 2

I'm not sure what kind of scheduled tasks you mean. If you mean stuff like "every hour, refresh foo.xml" type tasks, then use the Windows Scheduled Tasks system. (The "at" command, or via the controller.) Have it either run a console app or request a special page that kicks off the process.

Edit: I should add, this is an OK way to get your IIS app running at scheduled points too. So suppose you want to check your DB every 30 minutes and email reminders to users about some data, you can use scheduled tasks to request this page and hence get IIS processing things.

If your needs are more complex, you might consider creating a Windows Service and having it run a loop to do whatever processing you need. This also has the benefit of separating out the code for scaling or management purposes. On the downside, you need to deal with Windows services.

Answer 3

Here's another way:

1) Create a "heartbeat" web script that is responsible for launching the tasks if they are DUE or overdue to be launched.

2) Create a scheduled process somewhere (preferrably on the same web server) that hits the webscript and forces it to run at a regular interval. (e.g. windows schedule task that quietly launches the heatbeat script using IE or whathaveyou)

The fact that the task code is contained within a web script is purely for the sake of keeping the code within the web application code-base (the assumption is that both are dependent on each other), which would be easier for web developers to manage.

The alternate approach is to create an executable server script / program that does all the schedule work itself and run the executable itself as a scheduled task. This can allow for fundamental decoupling between the web application and the scheduled task. Hence if you need your scheduled tasks to run even in the even that the web app / database might be down or inaccessible, you should go with this approach.

Answer 4

One option would be to set up a windows service and get that to call your scheduled task.

In winforms I've used Timers put don't think this would work well in ASP.NET

Answer 5

Why reinvent the wheel, use the Threading and the Timer class.

    protected void Application_Start()
    {
        Thread thread = new Thread(new ThreadStart(ThreadFunc));
        thread.IsBackground = true;
        thread.Name = "ThreadFunc";
        thread.Start();
    }

    protected void ThreadFunc()
    {
        System.Timers.Timer t = new System.Timers.Timer();
        t.Elapsed += new System.Timers.ElapsedEventHandler(TimerWorker);
        t.Interval = 10000;
        t.Enabled = true;
        t.AutoReset = true;
        t.Start();
    }

    protected void TimerWorker(object sender, System.Timers.ElapsedEventArgs e)
    {
        //work args
    }

Answer 6

All of my tasks (which need to be scheduled) for a website are kept within the website and called from a special page. I then wrote a simple Windows service which calls this page every so often. Once the page runs it returns a value. If I know there is more work to be done, I run the page again, right away, otherwise I run it in a little while. This has worked really well for me and keeps all my task logic with the web code. Before writing the simple Windows service, I used Windows scheduler to call the page every x minutes.

Another convenient way to run this is to use a monitoring service like Pingdom. Point their http check to the page which runs your service code. Have the page return results which then can be used to trigger Pingdom to send alert messages when something isn't right.