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Day 13: Schedulers in AEM

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AEM Developer Series

In simple terms, a scheduler is a service to schedule jobs. Thus if we want some work to happen at a particular time or at a regular interval, then Schedulers are the way to go.

In AEM, we can create scheduler in two ways -

  1. Whiteboard Pattern - In this, we create a Runnable thread to perform our task. This is similar to the Java Thread concept.
  2. Scheduler API - In this, we use Apache Commons' Scheduler API to perform our task. It uses open-source Quartz library.
Both of these methods can be seen here. However, from AEM 6.2 onwards Felix SCR annotations are deprecated and are replaced with OSGi R6 annotations. Therefore, in this post, we will be discussing the clean way of creating schedulers that OSGi R6 annotations provide.

Scheduler in AEM

To create a scheduler in AEM, we will follow the below steps - 
  • Create an OSGi configuration to read the scheduler specific values from the user i.e. cron expression, the name of the scheduler, custom parameter etc.
  • Create a sling scheduler which displays the custom parameter at an interval specified by the cron expression.
Without making further delay, let's dive into our code

Create an OSGi configuration

Follow this post to create a new OSGi configuration class and paste the following code in it.

Here we are getting configuration properties for the Sling Scheduler.

Create Scheduler

Now we are going to create a sling scheduler. Create a class named CustomScheduler and paste the following code in it.
  • Let us understand the code step-by-step. First, we are registering the class as a service and implementing the Runnable interface. At the same time, using @Desginate annotation, we are linking the OSGi configuration created in the previous section with this class.
  • Now, we are injecting the org.apache.sling.commons.scheduler.Scheduler dependency.
  • In the activate() method, we are reading the required values. Then we are getting the schedulerId from the scheduler name.
  • The modified() method recalculates the schedulerId in case the OSGi configuration is modified.
  • In the addScheduler() method, we are registering the scheduler using the Scheduler API.
  • The run() method will be defining our task. Here we are just printing the customParameter in the logs.

Configuring OSGi

  • Go to ./system/console/configMgr and search for SlingSchedulerConfiguration and configure it like below screenshot.
OSGi Configuration

  • Save the configuration.

Result

Now go to your project-specific log (my log file is - project-demoproject.log) and look for the traces, you will find like below

org.redquark.demo.core.schedulers.CustomScheduler Scheduler added

org.redquark.demo.core.schedulers.CustomScheduler Custom Scheduler is now running using the passed custom parameter, customParameter AEM Scheduler Demo

org.redquark.demo.core.schedulers.CustomScheduler Custom Scheduler is now running using the passed custom parameter, customParameter AEM Scheduler Demo

org.redquark.demo.core.schedulers.CustomScheduler Removing scheduler: -1760311957

org.redquark.demo.core.schedulers.CustomScheduler Scheduler added

org.redquark.demo.core.schedulers.CustomScheduler Custom Scheduler is now running using the passed custom parameter, customParameter AEM Scheduler Demo

org.redquark.demo.core.schedulers.CustomScheduler Custom Scheduler is now running using the passed custom parameter, customParameter AEM Scheduler Demo

Conclusion

Congratulations!! 🙋 we have successfully created a Sling Scheduler and I hope you enjoyed this post.

You can find the complete code of this project on my GitHub in this commit. Feel free to fork or open issues, if any.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this and would like to have suggestions from you to make it better. 

Feel free to befriend me on Facebook, Twitter or Linked In or say Hi by email.

Happy Coding 😃
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Comments

  1. UnknownApril 16, 2019 at 3:50 PM

    Well explained . Great work. Hope this code will be executed AEM 6.3. Let me try this.
    Thanks
    Shahid

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anirudh SharmaJune 3, 2019 at 11:52 AM

      Thanks Shahid for your valuable feedback. I am sure this will work on your AEM 6.3 as the only difference is the use of OSGi annotations instead of Felix SCR annotations. OSGi annotations are supported in AEM 6.3.
      Do let me know in case you face issues executing the code.
      Cheers!

      Delete
  2. AnonymousJuly 31, 2019 at 5:44 PM

    Thanks for this great article. Huge help on a project that I'm currently working on.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Greg FullardFebruary 27, 2020 at 10:52 AM

    Thanks Anirudh. After having an issue with a scheduler not running (based on Archetype 14, running on AEM 6.3) I used some pointers from your setup to resolve my issue.

    Just one interesting thing to note: I needed to add addScheduler(config); into my activate method. Not sure if you missed it, because in your code you only invoke addScheduler in the modify method

    ReplyDelete
  4. AnonymousApril 4, 2020 at 11:35 PM

    Scheduler enable/disable is not working, it is keep on executing after disabling the service.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. James.RSeptember 30, 2020 at 2:32 PM

      There is a bug, change "scheduleOptions.name(config.schdulerName());" to "scheduleOptions.name(String.valueOf(schedulerId));", will ok, use this.scheduleOptions.name(<>) to set a name to the job, later use the same name to cancel the job using scheduler.unschedule(<>);

      Delete
    2. Anirudh SharmaOctober 1, 2020 at 10:02 AM

      You are right! See the latest version of this at - https://redquark.org/aem/day-16-schedulers-in-aem/

      Delete
  5. khanna.shweta_May 11, 2020 at 12:04 PM

    This code will give a sonar exception as : The class uses Sling Commons Scheduler. It should use Sling Jobs instead.

    ReplyDelete
  6. UnknownJuly 1, 2020 at 3:29 PM

    hey! finally i got good example in aem6.5. Its working good

    ReplyDelete
  7. Simon HobbsApril 7, 2021 at 3:18 PM

    This is a great tutorial, and the only one of its kind I have found so far. One thing is not clear though: is there a way to define the variables before hand? This tutorial creates a service which allows the user to edit variables via the configMgr, which is great for run time tuning, but we dont what to have to hand set all the variables for each env. We want to define the variables values for each run mode or similar via a file, so that they start off correct without manual intervention. Any suggestions?

    ReplyDelete

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