Chapter 5. Cron tasks

Cron is basically a time-based job scheduler that runs in the background on UNIX systems. Typically a task requiring repetitive actions to be carried out on a regular (pre-determined) basis would be ideal candidates for using cron.

Joomla systems can offer a number of different mechanisms to perform repetitive actions. The one that is best for any given site is very dependant upon the facilities offered by the hosting supplier.

Pseudo-cron

Plugin capture

It is possible to make use of a ‘bespoke’ plugin which can be invoked when someone accesses one or more pages upon a site and performs some predefined tasks. This is not really a 'real' cron since there is no possible way in which one can guarantee that there would be a site visitor at any predetermine time, and it has an unavoidable side effect of slowing the site access for the specific visitor that happen to visit the site at or immediately after the desired time. For this reason we have not implemented such a mechanism, however for some other ‘short’ running tasks it might be suitable, so although not suitable for our implementation it may in some circumstances provide a reasonable solution.

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