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How to set up cronjobs for Laravel

About Laravel

Laravel is one of the most popular PHP frameworks. With expressive syntax and ready-made packages, you can develop your websites rapidly from proof of concept to full-blown software-as-a-service.

Running Laravel cronjobs, the old way

Unlike Symfony, Laravel has a dedicated built-in package to set up and run cronjobs.

Once you schedule your tasks in your source code, you just need to set up one cronjob like this:

Terminal window
* * * * * cd /path-to-your-project && php artisan schedule:run > /dev/null 2>&1

Everything is okay, until it’s not:

  • Some error occurs, and it fails silently.
  • You need to change the scheduled time. Now update your code, wait for code review and deployment.
  • You need the script output from last Thursday, let’s dig in the log file. By the way, do you do log rotation?
  • You need to test-run one job. Work your magic.
  • You deploy your code to a new server, and you forgot to add the cronjob. How do you prevent cron duplicate executions?

When your website grows, and you need to run a lot of scheduled tasks, just using the default task scheduler is not enough.

The better way to run Laravel cronjobs

A much simpler way to run scheduled tasks is via the web.

Just create a route e.g. /cron/cleanup like this:

use App\Action\Backend\Cleanup;
use App\Http\Controllers\CronController;
use Illuminate\Http\Request;


Route::get('/cron/cleanup', function (Cleanup $cleanup, Request $request) {
  if($request->input('key') !== 'SUPER_SECRET') {
    return 'Hello there!';
  }


  ob_start();


  $cleanup->run();


  return ob_get_clean();
});

Now you can visit the cronjob URL

https://backend.example.com/cron/cleanup?key=SUPER_SECRET

with your browser to test your script.

If you still want to go with crontab, you can add it like this:

Terminal window
30 5 * * * curl https://backend.example.com/cron/cleanup?key=SUPER_SECRET

However, I’d recommend you to use a cronjob service like FastCron that offers:

  • Full cron logs including starting time, total time, script output, etc.
  • Email notifications when your cronjob fails or backs up again.
  • A nice simple interface for you and your team.
  • and many more features.

Give it a try now, it’s free!