Task Scheduler

Laravel Task Scheduler with Docker

Running a Laravel task scheduler with Docker can be a little different from traditional methods.

Important concepts

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If you're using fpm-apache or fpm-nginx, might need to set the stop signal to SIGTERM for a graceful shutdown (see this PR for more details why)
Be sure to set the health check
We will not use cron to run the scheduler
By default schedule:work checks every minute, so we will use that to run the system process
The actual time trigger itself is set within Laravel

We need to run the schedule:work command from Laravel. Although the docs say "Running the scheduler locally", this is what we want in production. It will run the scheduler in the foreground and execute it every minute. You can configure your Laravel app for the exact time that a command should run through a scheduled task.

Examples

Here is a simplified example of how you can achieve this with Docker Compose:

Notice we're calling the artisan command explicitly with the full path (/var/www/html/artisan). This is because we need to run the command from the context of the container.

Example & Simplified Docker Compose File

compose.yml

services:
  php:
    image: my/laravel-app

  task:
    image: my/laravel-app
    command: ["php", "/var/www/html/artisan", "schedule:work"]
    stop_signal: SIGTERM # Set this for graceful shutdown if you're using fpm-apache or fpm-nginx
    healthcheck:
      # This is our native healthcheck script for the scheduler
      test: ["CMD", "healthcheck-schedule"]
      start_period: 10s

Example in Laravel

This example is for Laravel version <= 10.

This is an example how we would set the actual execution time within Laravel itself:

app/Console/Kernel.php

<?php

namespace App\Console;

use Illuminate\Console\Scheduling\Schedule;
use Illuminate\Foundation\Console\Kernel as ConsoleKernel;

class Kernel extends ConsoleKernel
{
    /**
     * The Artisan commands provided by your application.
     *
     * @var array
     */
    protected $commands = [
        //
    ];

    /**
     * Define the application's command schedule.
     *
     * @param  \Illuminate\Console\Scheduling\Schedule  $schedule
     * @return void
     */
    protected function schedule(Schedule $schedule)
    {
        $schedule->command('process:invoices')->daily()->at('02:00')->timezone('America/Chicago');
        $schedule->command('process:latefees')->daily()->at('04:00')->timezone('America/Chicago');
    }

    /**
     * Register the commands for the application.
     *
     * @return void
     */
    protected function commands()
    {
        $this->load(__DIR__.'/Commands');

        require base_path('routes/console.php');
    }
}

routes/console.php

<?php
 
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\DB;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Schedule;
 
Schedule::call(function () {
    DB::table('recent_users')->delete();
})->daily()->at('04:00')->timezone('America/Chicago');

Automations

Automate your deployments and minimize your efforts with Laravel.

Queue

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