Modern applications often need to run specific tasks periodically. In this guide, you learn how to schedule periodic tasks.

If you need a clustered scheduler use the Quartz extension.

Prerequisites

To complete this guide, you need:

  • Roughly 15 minutes

  • An IDE

  • JDK 11+ installed with JAVA_HOME configured appropriately

  • Apache Maven 3.8.4

  • Optionally the Quarkus CLI if you want to use it

  • Optionally Mandrel or GraalVM installed and configured appropriately if you want to build a native executable (or Docker if you use a native container build)

Architecture

In this guide, we create a straightforward application accessible using HTTP to get the current value of a counter. This counter is periodically (every 10 seconds) incremented.

Architecture

Solution

We recommend that you follow the instructions in the next sections and create the application step by step. However, you can go right to the completed example.

Clone the Git repository: git clone https://github.com/quarkusio/quarkus-quickstarts.git, or download an archive.

The solution is located in the scheduler-quickstart directory.

Creating the Maven project

First, we need a new project. Create a new project with the following command:

CLI
quarkus create app org.acme:scheduler-quickstart \
    --extension=resteasy,scheduler \
    --no-code
cd scheduler-quickstart

To create a Gradle project, add the --gradle or --gradle-kotlin-dsl option.

For more information about how to install the Quarkus CLI and use it, please refer to the Quarkus CLI guide.

Maven
mvn io.quarkus.platform:quarkus-maven-plugin:999-SNAPSHOT:create \
    -DprojectGroupId=org.acme \
    -DprojectArtifactId=scheduler-quickstart \
    -Dextensions="resteasy,scheduler" \
    -DnoCode
cd scheduler-quickstart

To create a Gradle project, add the -DbuildTool=gradle or -DbuildTool=gradle-kotlin-dsl option.

It generates a new project including:

  • a landing page accessible on http://localhost:8080

  • example Dockerfile files for both native and jvm modes

  • the application configuration file

The project also imports the RESTEasy and scheduler extensions.

If you already have your Quarkus project configured, you can add the scheduler extension to your project by running the following command in your project base directory:

CLI
quarkus extension add 'scheduler'
Maven
./mvnw quarkus:add-extension -Dextensions="scheduler"
Gradle
./gradlew addExtension --extensions="scheduler"

This will add the following to your build file:

pom.xml
<dependency>
    <groupId>io.quarkus</groupId>
    <artifactId>quarkus-scheduler</artifactId>
</dependency>
build.gradle
implementation("io.quarkus:quarkus-scheduler")

Creating a scheduled job

In the org.acme.scheduler package, create the CounterBean class, with the following content:

package org.acme.scheduler;

import java.util.concurrent.atomic.AtomicInteger;
import javax.enterprise.context.ApplicationScoped;
import io.quarkus.scheduler.Scheduled;
import io.quarkus.scheduler.ScheduledExecution;

@ApplicationScoped              (1)
public class CounterBean {

    private AtomicInteger counter = new AtomicInteger();

    public int get() {  (2)
        return counter.get();
    }

    @Scheduled(every="10s")     (3)
    void increment() {
        counter.incrementAndGet(); (4)
    }

    @Scheduled(cron="0 15 10 * * ?") (5)
    void cronJob(ScheduledExecution execution) {
        counter.incrementAndGet();
        System.out.println(execution.getScheduledFireTime());
    }

    @Scheduled(cron = "{cron.expr}") (6)
    void cronJobWithExpressionInConfig() {
       counter.incrementAndGet();
       System.out.println("Cron expression configured in application.properties");
    }
}
1 Declare the bean in the application scope
2 The get() method allows retrieving the current value.
3 Use the @Scheduled annotation to instruct Quarkus to run this method every 10 seconds provided a worker thread is available (Quarkus is using 10 worker threads for the scheduler). If it is not available the method invocation should be re-scheduled by default i.e it should be invoked as soon as possible. The invocation of the scheduled method does not depend on the status or result of the previous invocation.
4 The code is pretty straightforward. Every 10 seconds, the counter is incremented.
5 Define a job with a cron-like expression. The annotated method is executed at 10:15am every day.
6 Define a job with a cron-like expression cron.expr which is configurable in application.properties.

Updating the application configuration file

Edit the application.properties file and add the cron.expr configuration:

# By default, the syntax used for cron expressions is based on Quartz - http://www.quartz-scheduler.org/documentation/quartz-2.3.0/tutorials/crontrigger.html
# You can change the syntax using the following property:
# quarkus.scheduler.cron-type=unix
cron.expr=*/5 * * * * ?

Creating the REST resource

Create the CountResource class as follows:

package org.acme.scheduler;

import javax.inject.Inject;
import javax.ws.rs.GET;
import javax.ws.rs.Path;
import javax.ws.rs.Produces;
import javax.ws.rs.core.MediaType;

@Path("/count")
public class CountResource {

    @Inject
    CounterBean counter;            (1)


    @GET
    @Produces(MediaType.TEXT_PLAIN)
    public String hello() {
        return "count: " + counter.get();  (2)
    }
}
1 Inject the CounterBean
2 Send back the current counter value

Package and run the application

Run the application with:

CLI
quarkus dev
Maven
./mvnw quarkus:dev
Gradle
./gradlew --console=plain quarkusDev

In another terminal, run curl localhost:8080/count to check the counter value. After a few seconds, re-run curl localhost:8080/count to verify the counter has been incremented.

Observe the console to verify that the message Cron expression configured in application.properties has been displayed indicating that the cron job using an expression configured in application.properties has been triggered.

As usual, the application can be packaged using:

CLI
quarkus build
Maven
./mvnw clean package
Gradle
./gradlew build

And executed with java -jar target/quarkus-app/quarkus-run.jar.

You can also generate the native executable with:

CLI
quarkus build --native
Maven
./mvnw package -Dnative
Gradle
./gradlew build -Dquarkus.package.type=native

Scheduler Configuration Reference