Flarum Scheduler Manager

huoxin

Bringing up this idea to see if it’s worth considering some changes to the core (if needed) before the RC release of 2.x.

The Problem

While working with scheduled jobs in flarum, I noticed that most scheduled tasks are hard-coded inside extensions. Some extensions allow configuring the timezone, but most don't. For tasks that run on a daily schedule, the concept of “midnight” becomes ambiguous when everything is based purely on UTC. In many cases, admins would prefer these tasks to run during local off-peak hours, typically around midnight in the region where most of their users are located.
Another issue is that multiple tasks can end up running at the same time because of hard-coded schedules. If an admin wants to change the timing, the only option is to modify the extension and maintain a fork, which is not ideal.

Proposal

So I though why not we have a Scheduler Manager (similar to the Extension Manager), that can:

See all registered scheduled jobs (alr available via console)
See when they last ran (alr available via console)
See when they will run next (alr available via console)
Optionally override their timing, ideally with timezone support (Most Important)

Example mockup:

This could help to:

provide flexibility to change timing for scheduled jobs
spread tasks across different times to avoid load spikes
provide a better way to visualize the scheduled jobs rather than using the console

andrewjs18

huoxin definitely would like to see this. Most forum software has a designated area/page to view all jobs/tasks and so should flarum...

KBExit

I could see the "Advanced" Dashboard being a good area for this.

huoxin

KBExit Might be a great spot, but isnt all these setting provided in core? Initially was thinking to have something similar to extension manager so it will just be in the extension tab itself

KBExit

huoxin I mean, a direct implementation might be cleaner in my opinion.

huoxin

KBExit Definitely, but I think flarum wants to keep core as minimal as possible
So that's why even extension manager is an extension by itself also 😂
That Advanced Page should be extendable I guess? (didnt really check the code) So shouldn't be an issue to add the setting in if needed

IanM

Not a bad idea, and something that we could do.

We already expose a list of the registered scheduled tasks on the command line with php flarum schedule:list

Exposing this to the admin UI, probably in the Advanced tab would be straightforward enough to do for sure. The tricky part would be to integrate/support modifying the schedules. Again, we can do this, but it would be a breaking change for all extensions that register tasks I think (still thinking out a centralised architecture as I type this).

So basically, providing the details to the UI - no problem, the code already exists to get the registered schedules. Adding a config for modifying those schedules, potentially a breaking change for extensions, so if we did it, it would have to wait until at least Flarum 2.1, as we are very close to RC now.