Install Redis

To get started with cronster, install Redis on your computer (macOS & Homebrew in this example):

$ brew install redis
$ brew services start redis

Digital Ocean has a great tutorial on how install Redis on Ubuntu.

Run the crawler

Assuming Redis is running on your machine in default configuration and you want to crawl from ~/projects, run the following command:

$ cronster_crawler -r ~/projects

The full help output explains the other options of the CLI application. It is possible to change certain parameters should Redis on a different host/port or should you want to adjust the interval between crawls:

Usage: cronster_crawler [OPTIONS]

Options:
  -r, --root TEXT           Crawling root, default: the current working directory
  -h, --cache-host TEXT     Cache host, default: localhost
  -p, --cache-port INTEGER  Cache port, default: 6379 (Redis default)
  -i, --interval INTEGER    Crawling interval, default: 2 seconds
  --help                    Show this message and exit.

Run the scheduler

Assuming Redis is running on your machine in default configuration, run the following command:

$ cronster_scheduler

The full help output explains the other options of the CLI application. It is possible to change Redis-related parameters should Redis on a different host or port:

Usage: cronster_scheduler [OPTIONS]

Options:
  -h, --cache-host TEXT     Cache host, default: localhost
  -p, --cache-port INTEGER  Cache port, default: 6379 (Redis default)
  --help                    Show this message and exit.

Write a crontab file

Write the following YAML file to ~/projects/crontab (or any other location anywhere in the hierarchy under your root location):

test_job:
    cmd: echo "Hello, World!"
    schedule: "*/5 * * * *"

You should see the job being picked up by the crawler on the next crawl and should see the scheduler run the job every five minutes.