NOTE: Minimum Supported Zig Version is 0.12.

This library aims to provide a way to parse crontab schedule entries and determine the next execution time.

W and # symbols are not supported.

If your cron entry has 5 values, minutes-day of week are used, default seconds is and default year is appended. If your cron entry has 6 values, minutes-year are used, and default seconds are prepended. As such, only 5-7 value crontab entries are accepted (and mangled to 7 values, as necessary).

This library also supports the convenient aliases:

• @yearly
• @annually
• @monthly
• @weekly
• @daily
• @hourly

To learn more about cron, visit crontab.guru.

The following example demonstrates how to use cron to build a simple scheduler.

const std = @import("std");
const Cron = @import("cron").Cron;
const datetime = @import("datetime").datetime;

fn job1(i: usize) !void {
    const now = datetime.Datetime.now();

    var buf: [64]u8 = undefined;
    const dt_str = try now.formatISO8601Buf(&buf, false);
    std.log.info("{s} {d}th execution", .{ dt_str, i });
}

pub fn main() !void {
    var c = Cron.init();
    // At every minute.
    try c.parse("*/1 * * * *");

    for (0..5) |i| {
        const now = datetime.Datetime.now();

        // Get the next run time
        const next_dt = try c.next(now);
        const duration = next_dt.sub(now);
        // convert to nanoseconds
        const nanos = duration.totalSeconds() * std.time.ns_per_s + duration.nanoseconds;

        // wait next
        std.time.sleep(@intCast(nanos));

        try job1(i + 1);
    }
}

Because cron needs to be used together with datetime, you need to add both of the following dependencies in build.zig.zon:

.{
    .name = "my-project",
    .version = "0.1.0",
    .dependencies = .{
       .cron = .{
           .url = "https://github.com/dying-will-bullet/cron/archive/refs/tags/v0.2.0.tar.gz",
           .hash = "1220f3f1e6659f434657452f4727889a2424c1b78ac88775bd1f036858a1e974ad41",
       },
       .datetime = .{
           .url = "https://github.com/frmdstryr/zig-datetime/archive/ddecb4e508e99ad6ab1314378225413959d54756.tar.gz",
           .hash = "12202cbb909feb6b09164ac997307c6b1ab35cb05a846198cf41f7ec608d842c1761",
       }
    },
}

Add them in build.zig:

diff --git a/build.zig b/build.zig
index 60fb4c2..0255ef3 100644
--- a/build.zig
+++ b/build.zig
@@ -15,6 +15,9 @@ pub fn build(b: *std.Build) void {
     // set a preferred release mode, allowing the user to decide how to optimize.
     const optimize = b.standardOptimizeOption(.{});

+    const opts = .{ .target = target, .optimize = optimize };
+    const cron_module = b.dependency("cron", opts).module("cron");
+    const datetime_module = b.dependency("datetime", opts).module("zig-datetime");
+
     const exe = b.addExecutable(.{
         .name = "m",
         // In this case the main source file is merely a path, however, in more
@@ -23,6 +26,7 @@ pub fn build(b: *std.Build) void {
         .target = target,
         .optimize = optimize,
     });
+    exe.addModule("cron", cron_module);
+    exe.addModule("datetime", datetime_module);


     // This declares intent for the executable to be installed into the
     // standard location when the user invokes the "install" step (the default

• Params:
  • input: The cron string to parse.
• Returns: void.

• Params:
  • now: It will use this datetime as the starting for calculations.
• Returns: next execution datetime.

• Params:
  • now: It will use this datetime as the starting for calculations.
• Returns: previous execution datetime.

MIT License Copyright (c) 2023, Hanaasagi