CrontabManager
PHP library to manage programmatically GNU/Linux cron jobs., (*1)
It enables you to :, (*2)
- Deal with your cron jobs in PHP.
- Create new Cron jobs.
- Update existing cron jobs.
- Manage cron jobs of others users than runtime user using some sudo
tricks (see below).
Requirements
- PHP 5.3+
-
crontab command-line utility (should be already installed in your
distribution).
-
sudo, if you want to manage crontab of another user than runtime
user without running into right issues (see below)
Installation
The library can be installed using Composer., (*3)
composer require tiben/crontab-manager ~1.0
Usage
The library is composed of three classes:, (*4)
-
CrontabJob is an entity class which represents a cron job.
-
CrontabRepository is used to persist/retrieve your cron jobs.
-
CrontabAdapter handles cron jobs persistance in the crontab.
Instantiate the repository
In order to work, the CrontabRepository needs an instance of
CrontabAdapter., (*5)
``` {.php}
$crontabRepository = new CrontabRepository(new CrontabAdapter());, (*6)
### Create new Job and persist it into the crontab
Suppose you want to create a new job which consists of launching the
command "df >> /tmp/df.log" every day at 23:30. You can do it in
two ways.
- In Pure oo way :
``` {.php}
$crontabJob = new CrontabJob();
$crontabJob
->setMinutes(30)
->setHours(23)
->setDayOfMonth('*')
->setMonths('*')
->setDayOfWeek('*')
->setTaskCommandLine('df >> /tmp/df.log')
->setComments('Logging disk usage'); // Comments are persisted in the crontab
```
- From raw cron syntax string using a factory method :
``` {.php}
$crontabJob = CrontabJob::createFromCrontabLine('30 23 * * * df >> /tmp/df.log');
```
You can now add your new cronjob in the crontab repository and persist
all changes to the crontab.
``` {.php}
$crontabRepository->addJob($crontabJob);
$crontabRepository->persist();
Find a specific cron job from the crontab repository and update it
Suppose we want to modify the hour of an already existing cronjob.
Finding existings jobs is done using some regular expressions. The regex
is applied to the entire crontab line., (*7)
``` {.php}
$results = $crontabRepository->findJobByRegex('/Logging\ disk\ usage/');
$crontabJob = $results[0];
$crontabJob->setHours(21);
$crontabRepository->persist();, (*8)
### Remove a cron job from the crontab
You can remove a job like this :
``` {.php}
$results = $crontabRepository->findJobByRegex('/Logging\ disk\ usage/');
$crontabJob = $results[0];
$crontabRepository->removeJob($crontabJob);
$crontabRepository->persist();
Note: Since cron jobs are internally matched by reference, they must be
previously obtained from the repository or previously added., (*9)
Work with the crontab of another user than runtime user
This feature allows you to manage the crontab of another user than the
user who launched the runtime. This can be useful when the runtime user
is www-data but the owner of the crontab you want to edit is your own
linux user account., (*10)
To do this, simply pass the username of the crontab owner as parameter
of the CrontabAdapter constructor. Suppose you are www-data and you
want to edit the crontab of user bobby:, (*11)
``` {.php}
$crontabAdapter = new CrontabAdapter('bobby');
$crontabRepository = new CrontabRepository($crontabAdapter);, (*12)
Using this way you will propably run into user rights issues. This can
be handled by editing your sudoers file using 'visudo'.\
If you want to allow user `www-data` to edit the crontab of user
`bobby`, add this line:
www-data ALL=(bobby) NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/crontab
which tells sudo not to ask for password when user `www-data` calls
`crontab` as user `bobby` using `sudo`
Now, you can access to the crontab of user `bobby` like this :
``` {.php}
$crontabAdapter = new CrontabAdapter('bobby', true);
$crontabRepository = new CrontabRepository($crontabAdapter);
Note the second parameter true of the CrontabAdapter constructor call.
This boolean tells the CrontabAdapter to use sudo internally when
calling crontab., (*13)
Enable or disable a cron job
You can enable or disable your cron jobs by using the setEnabled()
method of a CronJob object accordingly :, (*14)
{.php}
$crontabJob->setEnabled(false);, (*15)
This will prepend your cron job with a # in your
crontab when persisting it., (*16)
Write your own adapter
Additionally, if you cannot read another user's crontabs or if you are on a distributed architecture where crons are not
run on the machine executing the jobs, you can create any other Adapter for your architecture
by implementing the CrontabAdapterInterface., (*17)
You can then instantiate the CrontabRepository with your adapter., (*18)
Unit tests
Tests have been written using PHPUnit and require version 5.3+. To
execute tests:, (*19)
$ phpunit <crontab-library-path>/tests
If you installed the library using Composer and installed
dev-dependencies you can execute them using included PHPUnit as
dependency:, (*20)
$ ./vendor/bin/phpunit <crontab-library-path>/tests
Contributions
... are welcome :), (*21)
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