Question

I was reading into using Quartz http://quartznet.sourceforge.net/tutorial/lesson_3.html but I don’t understand how to implement. I was also reading this https://blog.stackoverflow.com/2008/07/easy-background-tasks-in-aspnet/, also don’t understand how to implement, specifically, where do I put it and how do I access my controllers/actions?

There is a comment on the article linked above that suggests to use, "… a simple timer in global.asax." How can this be achieved?

Basically, I would like to know how (and what’s the best way) to schedule the following action on the following controller?

Public Class RssController
    Inherits System.Web.Mvc.Controller

    Function InsertRssFeedItem(ByVal url as String) As ActionResult

      ' code to get RSS and insert into database '

    End Function

End Class

Answer 1

I generally consider it bad practice to have a web server doing automation, I prefer that to be kept away in a service that is more suited to automated jobs.

That said, using the above artice, I would put the section titled using Quartz.net into the application_start in global.asax

In the application_end, shut down the job scheduler.

Finally, in a folder, write a class like:

c#

public class InsertRssFeedJob : IJob
{
     public void Execute(JobExecutionContext context)
     {
          var rssController = new RssController();
          rssController.InsertRssFeedItem("");
     }
}

vb.net

Public Class InsertRssFeedJob
    Implements IJob

    Public Sub Execute(context as JobExecutionContext)
        Dim rssContoller = new RssController()
        rssController.InsertRssFeedItem("")
    End Sub

End Class

Sorry, I don’t know VB that well to write it outside of an IDE, so you will need to convert this c#.

 private static IScheduler _scheduler; 
    protected void Application_Start()
    {
        AreaRegistration.RegisterAllAreas();

        RegisterGlobalFilters(GlobalFilters.Filters);
        RegisterRoutes(RouteTable.Routes);

        _scheduler = new StdSchedulerFactory().GetScheduler();

        JobDetail jobDetail = new JobDetail("rssFeedJob", null, typeof(InsertRssFeedJob));
        // fire every hour
        Trigger trigger = TriggerUtils.MakeHourlyTrigger();
        // start on the next even hour
        trigger.StartTime = TriggerUtils.GetEvenHourDate(DateTime.UtcNow);
        trigger.Name = "myTrigger";

        _scheduler.ScheduleJob(jobDetail, trigger); 

    }

    protected void Application_End()
    {
        _scheduler.Shutdown();
    }

Also, if the RssController needs access to any context information, you will need to get that from the HttpContext class.

Si