Scheduling jobs on Node.js with node-schedule

Emmanouil GkatziourasApril 27th, 2016Last Updated: April 24th, 2016

0 52 1 minute read

Batching is a great part of todays software development. The business world runs on batch from bank statements to promotion emails.

Node.js has some good libraries for such cases.

Node Schedule is a light cron like scheduler for node.

npm install node-schedule

In case your are used to cron and the cron expression format, it will be pretty easy for you.

var scheduler = require('node-schedule');
 
var montlyJob  = scheduler.scheduleJob('0 0 1 * *', function(){
  console.log('I run the first day of the month');
});

But you also have a javascript object approach

var scheduler = require('node-schedule');

var rule = new scheduler.RecurrenceRule();
rule.hour = 7
rule.dayOfWeek = new schedule.Range(0,6)
 
var dailyJob = schedule.scheduleJob(date, function(){
  console.log('I run on days at 7:00');
});

scheduler.scheduleJob(rule,task);

Also you can have tasks submitted by giving a date

var scheduler = require('node-schedule');

var date = new Date(2017, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0);
var newYearJob = scheduler.scheduleJob(date, function() {
    console.log("Happy new year");
});

However in case your job is not needed you can cancel it pretty easy