How to Create Cron Job Programmatically in Magento 2

Magento 2 Create Cron Job is setting an automatic schedule on time, which is really convenient when you run a Magento 2 store. Why is it such a useful function? For example, a software like website statistics or content management system may require activities at a certain time, but you cannot take care of that manually. That is when creating Cron Job on your web server becomes handy.

And don’t worry about the complex tutorial, as I am here to make it simple and easy for you to follow. Even if you are not tech-savvy, you can still learn it with ease.

Magento 2 Create Cron Job Programmatically

• What is Cron Job?
• How to Create Cron Job in Magento 2
  • Create crontab.xml
  • Create Test.php
• Applications of Cron Job for Magento 2

What is a Cron Job?

Cron Job is a great feature by Linux, the free operating system for the user. The cron Job will create a command or a script that is appropriate with the task you want to do. Instead of manual working, the Cron Job allows running automatically in exact time and date. Due to its automation, the Cron Jobs is the perfect choice for repeated projects every date or every week.

Note

Cron configuration is very important in Magento to set the schedule for many system activities such as reindexing, auto-update of currency rates, Magento emails, etc. Only when the configuration is correct, the cron job is active. In case there is an error, this means Magento won’t function as expected.

How to Create Cron Job in Magento 2

Please follow the guides to start the cron job program as your wish:

• Create a class within the “Cron” folder

• Manually setup the cron schedule by using PHP: bin/magento cron:run

• Find a log in the var/log/system.log after the cron job has run.

• Login to Magento 2 Admin panel, do as the path: Stores > Configuration > Advanced > System, then change scheduler settings per cron group.

• Finally, run cron from the command line:

magento cron:run [--group="<cron group name>"]

Now, We will add a custom cron in the HelloWorld module.

Create crontab.xml

File: app/code/Mageplaza/HelloWorld/etc/crontab.xml

Content would be

<?xml version="1.0" ?>
<config xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="urn:magento:module:Magento_Cron:etc/crontab.xsd">
	<group id="default">
		<job instance="Mageplaza\HelloWorld\Cron\Test" method="execute" name="mageplaza_helloworld_cron">
			<schedule>* * * * *</schedule>
		</job>
	</group>
</config>

• group id is your cron group name. You can run only cron for single group at a time.
• job instance is a class to be instantiated (classpath).
• job method is the method in job instance to call.
• job name is Unique ID for this cron job.
• schedule is the schedule in cron format. The following graph shows what it consists of:

* * * * * command to be executed
| | | | |
| | | | +----- Day of week (0 - 7) (Sunday=0 or 7)
| | | +------- Month (1 - 12)
| | +--------- Day of month (1 - 31)
| +----------- Hour (0 - 23)
+------------- Minute (0 - 59)

In crontab.xml, we have defined job instance as Mageplaza\HelloWorld\Cron\Test. It should be created now.

Create Test.php

File: app/code/Mageplaza/HelloWorld/Cron/Test.php

Content would be:

<?php

namespace Mageplaza\HelloWorld\Cron;

class Test
{

	public function execute()
	{

		$writer = new \Zend\Log\Writer\Stream(BP . '/var/log/cron.log');
		$logger = new \Zend\Log\Logger();
		$logger->addWriter($writer);
		$logger->info(__METHOD__);

		return $this;

	}
}

All done, now please flush cache and run magento cron:run --group="default" from the command line.

To check whether the Cron is working properly, go to var/log/cron.log of your store and you will see the text Mageplaza\HelloWorld\Cron\Test::execute in it.

Explore Magento 2 Cron Schedule

Applications of Cron Job for Magento 2

Several Magento features require at least one Cron Job, which schedules activities to occur in the future. A partial list of these activities follows:

• Catalog price rules
• Newsletters
• Generating Google sitemaps
• Customer Alerts/Notifications (product price change, product back in stock)
• Reindexing
• Private sales (Magento Commerce only)
• Automatic updating of currency rates
• All Magento emails (including order confirmation and transactional)