Create a cronjob

Question

I am trying to create a cronjob that will run my script (which imports an XML files) on a set time. For now I put it to run every 2 min., just for testing purposes.

What I've done is just add the following code in the config.xml of the particular module, that takes care of the importing:

<crontab>
        <jobs>
            <productimporter_import_xml>
                <schedule>
                    <cron_expr>*/2 * * * *</cron_expr>
                </schedule>
                <run>
                    <model>productimporter/catalog_importer::_importFile</model>
                </run>
            </productimporter_import_xml>
        </jobs>
    </crontab>

So, the module in the local code is called ProductImporter, and the script is ProductImporter/Model/Catalog/Importer.php and _importFile is the initial function.

Apparently this doesn't work. Is there something else that has to be set, additionally to the config.xml? Or maybe I haven't done my setting correctly (perhaps the path), I don't a real clue...

Answer 1

There are some extra steps for certain systems here.

I seem to remember reading somewhere that even if you set a cronjob to run every couple of minutes it will still only run every 5 minutes or more, although I can't confirm this.

EDIT: The cron jobs have their individual run times but there is also a schedule generation time which will generate the list of jobs (every 15mins on our server), meaning that if the schedule has just been generated and you then create a job for every 5 minutes, you would have to wait until the schedule is generated again for the job to work.

Answer 2

Your config looks ok as far as I see. I wonder if your function _importFile is public, as many ppl tend to use the _ to identify protected or private methods.

For debugging cronjobs I use this magento module http://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/aoe-scheduler.html

it allows you to execute a specific cronjob by its code, so you could call it on cli via:
php shell/scheduler.php -action runNow -code productimporter_import_xml

If this works, but not the cron, try to execute the cron.php once a minute for a few minutes and see what happens in the database table cron_schedule.