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Scheduler

Tiny ships with a fluent, cron-style scheduler. You define jobs in PHP, register them in app/scheduler.php, and add one cron entry — that’s the whole install. The scheduler supports second-level, minute, hourly, daily, weekday, monthly, and arbitrary cron expressions.

Quick start

app/scheduler.php:

<?php
require_once __DIR__ . '/../tiny/tiny.php';

tiny::scheduler()->job('Reports/daily')->daily('02:00');
tiny::scheduler()->job('Cache/warm', ['users'])->everyMinute(5);
tiny::scheduler()->job('Heartbeat/ping')->everySecond(5);
tiny::scheduler()->job('Cleanup/temp')->at('*/15 * * * *');

tiny::scheduler()->run();

Cron entry:

# Minute-level only
* * * * * /usr/bin/php /var/www/app/scheduler.php >/dev/null 2>&1

For second-level jobs, use the bundled wrapper instead:

* * * * * /var/www/tiny/scheduler.sh >/dev/null 2>&1

scheduler.sh invokes scheduler.php every 500ms for one minute, which is what gives ->everySecond() its resolution.

Defining jobs

tiny::scheduler()->job($target, $args = []) returns a Job you chain timing methods onto.

$target can be:

Form	Calls
'function_name'	Global function function_name(...$args)
'ClassName/method'	(new ClassName())->method(...$args)
'ClassName::staticMethod'	ClassName::staticMethod(...$args)

Job classes live in app/jobs/. The framework autoloads all files in that directory at scheduler boot.

// app/jobs/reports.php
<?php
class Reports
{
    public function daily(): string
    {
        tiny::mailgun()->send('admin@example.com', 'Daily report', '…');
        return 'sent';
    }
}

Timing API

Sub-minute

$job->everySecond();      // every second
$job->everySecond(5);     // every 5 seconds

Requires scheduler.sh (not a bare php scheduler.php cron entry).

Minute / hour

$job->everyMinute();
$job->everyMinute(5);     // every 5 minutes (at :00, :05, :10, …)
$job->hourly();           // every hour at :00
$job->hourly(15);         // every hour at :15

Daily

$job->daily();            // every day at 00:00
$job->daily('22:03');     // every day at 22:03
$job->daily(22, 3);       // same, two-arg form

Weekday

$job->sunday();           // Sundays at 00:00
$job->monday('09:00');
$job->friday(18);
$job->saturday(12, 30);

All days are available: sunday, monday, tuesday, wednesday, thursday, friday, saturday.

Month

$job->january();              // Jan 1 at 00:00
$job->december(25);           // Dec 25 at 00:00
$job->august(15, 20, 30);     // Aug 15 at 20:30

All months are available.

Cron expression

$job->at('*/5 * * * *');      // every 5 minutes
$job->at('30 2 * * 1-5');     // weekdays at 02:30

The cron expression is parsed by dragonmantank/cron-expression.

One-off date

$job->date('2024-12-31 23:59:59');

Running

tiny::scheduler()->run();

Iterates over registered jobs, executes the ones whose schedule matches now. Idempotent on jobs that aren’t due.

Testing jobs locally

Use the test harness for manual debugging without waiting for cron:

// app/controllers/test-scheduler.php — only works when ENV=local
<?php
class TestScheduler extends TinyController
{
    public function get($request, $response)
    {
        tiny::initTestScheduler();
        $job = new Reports();
        echo $job->daily();
    }
}

Visit /test-scheduler and the job runs immediately. The harness refuses to run outside ENV=local.

Where jobs live

The conventional layout:

app/
├── jobs/
│   ├── reports.php          # class Reports
│   ├── cleanup.php          # class Cleanup
│   └── …
├── scheduler.php            # registers + runs jobs
└── scheduler.sh             # optional, copy from tiny/ for second-level

Best practices

1. One responsibility per job class. Mirror your domain (Reports, Cleanup, Notifications, Imports).
2. Don’t share state across jobs. Each scheduler.php invocation is a fresh process.
3. Make jobs idempotent. Cron will occasionally re-run on clock drift / restarts.
4. Log explicitly. tiny::log() writes to TINY_LOG_FILE.
5. Use TINY_DB_AUTOCONNECT=false for jobs that don’t touch the database.
6. Guard production-only jobs with $_SERVER['ENV'] === 'prod' if needed.