So, this question has been asked lots, and i have seen many different answers, but nothing finite or absolute for my scenario.
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What I want to do:
We have a website, with a community of users.
In the admin section of the website, there are buttons to run the following functions:
Email all the users our weekly newsletter [Thursday 4pm],
message users that day’s information [Daily 6pm],
post to facebook through facebook connect [Daily 8am and 6pm],
etc, etc. (There will be new requirements coming soon too, but they will follow the same principal)
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All I want to do is to run these functions automatically, so a member of staff does not need to go to the website, login, then click each of the buttons at the set times.
That is, effectively, have the server click these buttons automatically, at the set times mentioned above.
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I have seen suggestions for building a service with a timer built in, which will call each function, or use windows task scheduler, build an exe / com etc, but i get the gut feeling it should not be this complicated.
We have the code already written to actually do the tasks in a .net web page, and using some custom built classes etc.
I just do not know how to automatically call these functions at the desired times.
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Server Info:
Dedicated server running Windows Web Server 2008 R2 (64bit)
Development Enviro:
Visual Studio 2010 SP1, using .NET 4.0
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Thank you in advance for your help.
Kindest Regards,
Del
Splitting out the code into separate exes/dlls that can be called from the Windows task scheduler as well as your application is the way to go.
There’s no sense in re-inventing a scheduler inside your application when one exists in the operating system you are running on. Particularly as your application is a web application which should be doing web things not server things.
The added advantage is that you have made your application more modular and easier to upgrade.