• Introduction
• Getting started
• Implementation
  • *.cron
• Useful sites and debugging
• Examples
  • Logging current time
  • Drupal cron
  • Laravel cron
  • OpenMage cron
  • TYPO3 scheduler
  • WordPress cron

This DDEV add-on helps to execute a command in the web container based on a cron schedule. Cron is a classic Linux/Unix service with a well-known configuration syntax.

The add-on:

• Installs and runs the cron service inside the web container
• Adds an example job that writes out the current time.

This extension is designed to be a generic implementation. See Running TYPO3 Cron inside the web container for a specific example of a manual setup.

• Install the DDEV cron add-on:

  ddev get ddev/ddev-cron

• Add at least one ./ddev/web-build/*.cron file. This will be automatically added to crontab on startup. See Implementation

• Restart DDEV to apply changes:

  ddev restart

This extension does the following:

• Adds required cron service to the web container.
• Configures the cron service using ./ddev/web-build/cron.conf.
• Adds all ./ddev/web-build/*.cron files to crontab scheduler.

This addon uses *.cron files to populate crontab. This allows projects to track and manage cron jobs via git.

On ddev start, all ./ddev/web-build/*.cron files are:

• Copied into the /etc/cron.d.
• Have their permissions updated.
• Added to crontab.

See .ddev/web-build/time.cron.example and Examples section below for specific example.

• crontab guru is a helpful for generating cron schedule expressions.
• For crontab usage, see crontab man page.
• Check crontab by running ddev exec crontab -l.
• If you want the cron to run on your local time instead of UTC, make sure to set timezone in your .ddev/config.yaml.
• To help debug, connect to the web container session (ddev ssh) and manually run the commands to confirm expected results.
• If you are running a CMS command that requires access to the database, set the environment variable IS_DDEV_PROJECT=true

The following examples are provide as guides. PRs are welcome for changes and updates for current best practices for specific frameworks.

This addon provides an example that can check if the cron service is running. Every minute, it writes the current time (UTC timezone) to ./time.log.

• Rename ./ddev/web-build/time.cron.example to ./ddev/web-build/time.cron
• Restart the DDEV project to start the time example.
• After at least a minute, you should see ./time.log containing the web container's current time.

• Create a ./.ddev/web-build/drupal.cron file
• Add the following code to run the drupal scheduler every 10 minutes and write to a log file.
  • DDEV_PHP_VERSION value must match your project's PHP version.

*/10 * * * * IS_DDEV_PROJECT=true DDEV_PHP_VERSION=8.1 /var/www/html/vendor/bin/drush cron | tee -a /var/www/html/cron-log.txt

• Create a ./.ddev/web-build/laravel.cron file
• Add the following code to run the laravel scheduler every minute.

* * * * * cd /var/www/html && IS_DDEV_PROJECT=true php artisan schedule:run >> /dev/null 2>&1

• Create a ./.ddev/web-build/openmage.cron file
• Add the following code to run the OpenMage scheduler every minute.

* * * * * /var/www/html/cron.sh

• Create a ./.ddev/web-build/typo3.cron file
• Add the following code to run the typo3 scheduler every minute and write to a log file.

* * * * * cd /var/www/html && IS_DDEV_PROJECT=true vendor/bin/typo3 scheduler:run -vv | tee -a /var/www/html/scheduler-log.txt

• Create a ./.ddev/web-build/wordpress.cron file
• Add the following code to trigger the WordPress scheduler.

*/15 * * * * IS_DDEV_PROJECT=true DDEV_PHP_VERSION=8.1 cd /var/www/html && /usr/local/bin/wp cron event run --due-now 2>&1 | tee -a /var/www/html/cron.log

• This configuration will run the WordPress scheduler every 15 minutes and will create a cron.log file in the root of your project

Contributed and maintained by @tyler36 based on the original Running TYPO3 Cron inside the web container by @thomaskieslich

Originally Contributed by @thomaskieslich in https://github.com/ddev/ddev-contrib/tree/master/recipes/cronjob)