Request: cron-like functionality

[vegai]

Hi,

AppEngine is almost perfect for an application I have been thinking
about, except for one little thing. I need to make updates on a
regular basis (probably every minute). In a typical Unix setup, I
would use cron.

I suppose I could simulate this by defining an action that does this
and then calling that action from another box every minute, but that
is frankly a horrible solution :)

Could you implement some sort of a cron thing in AppEngine?

[Brett Morgan]

Star http://code.google.com/p/googleappengine/issues/detail?id=6 plz =)

--

Brett Morgan http://brett.morgan.googlepages.com/

[TonyB]

I haven't put this into practice yet, but I had this idea for an app
I'm planning.

If its for updating data, update it on the page request. Store the
time when you run the update. When the page is requsted, check the
current time against the stored time. If more than a minute has passed
run the update, if not carry on as normal. This saves unnecessary
cycles.

I wouldn't hold your breath on Google allowing cron access.

[klenwell]

I think we had the same idea:

http://kwap.appspot.com/kronk

This was just a prototype to wet my feet with GAE, but hopefully the
concept is clear. It uses the datastore to log and filter requests.
To run your cron, configure the cron settings and set up a url for
your task like you would a webservice. Then from any other server,
set up a cron that uses wget or lynx or something to request the url
every minute and it would run.

Just a proof of concept and I would much prefer to see cron integrated
into GAE. But if you're desperate, it's one option.

Tom

[Filip]

Actually, the Google App Team is working on background processing.
They couldn't promise any dates, but this is amongst their top three
priorities.
Also, Peter Dolan is working on HTTPMR, a MapReduce implementation
that is driven by hitting URLs. Search for HTTPMR on this group.

Filip.

[Karim A.]

> Actually, the Google App Team is working on background processing.
> They couldn't promise any dates, but this is amongst their top three
> priorities

How do you know? :)

[Roberto Saccon]

and what are the other two top priorities ?

[Filip]

Well, the GAE team was pretty upfront about it in the Fireside Chat.
Their top three priorities currently are (in any order - these are
different team members working concurrently):
* Getting the billing to work better
* Supporting more languages
* Background processing

The team didn't give firm dates on the features, other than that
they'd like all of them as soon as possible, and that billing should
probably be there before the end of the year.

By the way, I didn't ask, but I should not that in their OpenSocial
efforts they intended to support OpenId (I didn't attend those
sessions - anybody who can correct me?). I guess that will impact the
login procedure with Google, which should bleed through to Google App
Engine.

There are many other things they'd like to do, but resources are
limited.

They anticipated to eventually get most things on the Issue list
solved, and they explicitly referred people there for feature
requests.

Also, they were pretty well aware of what was written on the group. So
writing here helps.

Filip.