What is the best solution to perform scheduled tasks in Java, whatever the OS?

Question

I\'d like to generate alarms on my Java desktop application :

• alarms set with a specific date/time which can be in 5 minutes or 5 months
• I need to be able

Answer 1

Here's what I ended up implementing:

public class AlarmManager {
    public static final String ALARM_CLI_FORMAT = "startalarm:";
    public static SupportedOS currentOS = SupportedOS.UNSUPPORTED_OS;

    public enum SupportedOS {
        UNSUPPORTED_OS,
        MAC_OS,
        WINDOWS,
    }

    public AlarmManager() {
        final String osName = System.getProperty("os.name");
        if (osName == null) {
            L.e("Unable to retrieve OS!");
        } else if ("Mac OS X".equals(osName)) {
            currentOS = SupportedOS.MAC_OS;
        } else if (osName.contains("Windows")) {
            currentOS = SupportedOS.WINDOWS;
        } else {
            L.e("Unsupported OS: "+osName);
        }
    }

    /**
     * Windows only: name of the scheduled task
     */
    private String getAlarmName(final long alarmId) {
        return new StringBuilder("My_Alarm_").append(alarmId).toString();
    }

    /**
     * Gets the command line to trigger an alarm
     * @param alarmId
     * @return
     */
    private String getAlarmCommandLine(final long alarmId) {
        return new StringBuilder("javaws -open ").append(ALARM_CLI_FORMAT).append(alarmId).append(" ").append(G.JNLP_URL).toString();
    }

    /**
     * Adds an alarm to the system list of scheduled tasks
     * @param when
     */
    public void createAlarm(final Calendar when) {
        // Create alarm
        // ... stuff here
        final long alarmId = 42;

        // Schedule alarm
        String[] commandLine;
        Process child;
        final String alarmCL = getAlarmCommandLine(alarmId);
        try {
            switch (currentOS) {
            case MAC_OS:
                final String cron = new SimpleDateFormat("mm HH d M '*' ").format(when.getTime()) + alarmCL;

                commandLine = new String[] {
                        "/bin/sh", "-c",
                        "crontab -l | (cat; echo \"" + cron + "\") | crontab"
                };
                child = Runtime.getRuntime().exec(commandLine);
                break;

            case WINDOWS:
                commandLine = new String[] {
                        "schtasks",
                        "/Create",
                        "/ST "+when.get(Calendar.HOUR_OF_DAY) + ":" + when.get(Calendar.MINUTE),
                        "/SC ONCE",
                        "/SD "+new SimpleDateFormat("dd/MM/yyyy").format(when.getTime()), // careful with locale here! dd/MM/yyyy or MM/dd/yyyy? I'm French! :)
                        "/TR \""+alarmCL+"\"",
                        "/TN \""+getAlarmName(alarmId)+"\"",
                        "/F",
                };
                L.d("create command: "+Util.join(commandLine, " "));
                child = Runtime.getRuntime().exec(commandLine);
                break;
            }
        } catch (final IOException e) {
            L.e("Unable to schedule alarm #"+alarmId, e);
            return;
        }

        L.i("Created alarm #"+alarmId);
    }

    /**
     * Removes an alarm from the system list of scheduled tasks
     * @param alarmId
     */
    public void removeAlarm(final long alarmId) {
        L.i("Removing alarm #"+alarmId);
        String[] commandLine;
        Process child;
        try {
            switch (currentOS) {
            case MAC_OS:
                commandLine = new String[] {
                        "/bin/sh", "-c",
                        "crontab -l | (grep -v \""+ALARM_CLI_FORMAT+"\") | crontab"
                };
                child = Runtime.getRuntime().exec(commandLine);
                break;

            case WINDOWS:
                commandLine = new String[] {
                        "schtasks",
                        "/Delete",
                        "/TN \""+getAlarmName(alarmId)+"\"",
                        "/F",
                };
                child = Runtime.getRuntime().exec(commandLine);
                break;
            }
        } catch (final IOException e) {
            L.e("Unable to remove alarm #"+alarmId, e);
        }
    }

    public void triggerAlarm(final long alarmId) {
        // Do stuff
        //...
        L.i("Hi! I'm alarm #"+alarmId);

        // Remove alarm
        removeAlarm(alarmId);
    }
}

Usage is simple. Schedule a new alarm using:

final AlarmManager m = new AlarmManager();
final Calendar cal = new GregorianCalendar();
cal.add(Calendar.MINUTE, 1);
m.createAlarm(cal);

Trigger an alarm like this:

public static void main(final String[] args) {
    if (args.length >= 2 && args[1] != null && args[1].contains(AlarmManager.ALARM_CLI_FORMAT)) {
        try {
            final long alarmId = Long.parseLong(args[1].replace(AlarmManager.ALARM_CLI_FORMAT, ""));
            final AlarmManager m = new AlarmManager();
            m.triggerAlarm(alarmId);
        } catch (final NumberFormatException e) {
            L.e("Unable to parse alarm !", e);
        }
    }
}

Tested on Mac OS X.6 and Windows Vista. The class L is an helper to System.out.println and G holds my global constants (here, my JNLP file on my server used to launch my application).

Answer 2

Of the available options you have listed, IMHO Option 3 is better. As you are looking only for an external trigger to execute the application, CRON or Scheduled tasks are better solutions than other options you have listed. By this way, you remove a complexity from your application and also your application need not be running always. It could be triggered externally and when the execution is over, your application will stop. Hence, unnecessary resource consumption is avoided.

Answer 3

I believe your scenario is correct. Since services are system specific things, IMHO you should not user a generic package to cover them all, but have a specific mechanism for every system.

Answer 4

Bicou: Great that you shared your solution!

Note that the "schtasks.exe" has some localization issues, if you want to create a daily trigger with it, on an English Windows you'd have to use "daily", on a German one (for example) you'd have to use "täglich" instead.

To resolve this issue I've implemented the call to schtasks.exe with the /xml-option, providing a temporary xml-file which I create by template.

The easiest way to create such a template is to create a task "by hand" and use the "export"-function in the task management GUI tool.

Answer 5

You can also try using Quartz http://quartz-scheduler.org/ . It has a CRON like syntax to schedule jobs.