Hello everyone!
I am trying to find right solution for my Phoenix application. I should update data every day by sending requests (3000 requests) to some server.
What should I use:
- send_after
- Quantum
- or something else?
Many thanks!
1 Like
I wrote a blog post about some of the built in features you can use for background jobs.
Here’s another approach I’ve used to run a mix task on a regular interval. See the inline docs for how to use it.
defmodule MyApp.Scheduler do
@moduledoc """
Schedules a Mix task to be run at a given interval in milliseconds.
## Options
- `:task`: The name of the Mix task to run.
- `:args`: A list of arguments to pass to the Mix task's `run/1` function.
- `:interval`: The time interval in millisconds to rerun the task.
## Example
In a supervisor:
worker(MyApp.Scheduler, [[[
task: "contest.pick_winners",
args: [],
interval: 60000
]]], id: :contest_winners)
On its own:
MyApp.Scheduler.start_link([task: "ping", args: [], interval: 3000])
"""
use GenServer
require Logger
def start_link(opts) do
{:ok, pid} = GenServer.start_link(__MODULE__, opts)
:timer.apply_interval(opts[:interval], __MODULE__, :perform, [pid])
{:ok, pid}
end
def perform(scheduler) do
GenServer.cast(scheduler, :perform)
end
def handle_cast(:perform, opts) do
Logger.info(~s{Scheduler running "mix #{opts[:task]}" with args #{inspect(opts[:args])}})
Mix.Task.run(opts[:task], opts[:args])
Mix.Task.reenable(opts[:task])
{:noreply, opts}
end
end
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If it is very periodic I’d use Quantum, it is more reliable especially if the system restarts on occasion.
2 Likes
You may find this StackOverflow thread helpful:
1 Like
Thanks! 
If you decide to go the send_after route, I wrote a short article that might help you out. That said, because you want this to run periodically at a specific time, rather than “roughly every N seconds/minutes”, Quantum or some other cron-like solution might be a better way to go.
3 Likes
