Scheduled Events

[Taylor Cowan <tc...@silverstream.com>]

What do you folks think about a scheduled event daemon?  J2EE doesn't cover
this, I don't think any other frameworks do it yet, and it is similar to
request event handling except the events are "anonymous" and don't contain a
request object.

It could be implemented around a server startup servlet which reads a config
file, much like the Action servlet, and at designated intervals invokes the
"action" class specified in the config file.  Instead of passing in the
request object it would only be able to send the servlet context.  There are
a lot of uses for something like this, for instance, downloading messages
from a pop3 server, checking load info and sending out warnings, or anything
that we might have used cron to do 'back in the day'. (Well, some of you may
not know what Cron is and it's probably better that way ).

I suppose it could be implemented entirely separate to Struts, however, it
would make a nice addition.

Taylor Cowan

Re: Scheduled Events

[Taylor Cowan <tc...@silverstream.com>]

I quick look through "Turbine" and I found it.  Never mind.

Taylor
----- Original Message -----
From: "Taylor Cowan" <tc...@silverstream.com>
To: <st...@jakarta.apache.org>
Sent: Wednesday, May 09, 2001 9:40 PM
Subject: Scheduled Events


> What do you folks think about a scheduled event daemon?  J2EE doesn't
cover
> this, I don't think any other frameworks do it yet, and it is similar to
> request event handling except the events are "anonymous" and don't contain
a
> request object.
>
> It could be implemented around a server startup servlet which reads a
config
> file, much like the Action servlet, and at designated intervals invokes
the
> "action" class specified in the config file.  Instead of passing in the
> request object it would only be able to send the servlet context.  There
are
> a lot of uses for something like this, for instance, downloading messages
> from a pop3 server, checking load info and sending out warnings, or
anything
> that we might have used cron to do 'back in the day'. (Well, some of you
may
> not know what Cron is and it's probably better that way ).
>
> I suppose it could be implemented entirely separate to Struts, however, it
> would make a nice addition.
>
> Taylor Cowan

Re: Scheduled Events

["Craig R. McClanahan" <cr...@apache.org>]

On Wed, 9 May 2001, Taylor Cowan wrote:

> What do you folks think about a scheduled event daemon?  J2EE doesn't cover
> this, I don't think any other frameworks do it yet, and it is similar to
> request event handling except the events are "anonymous" and don't contain a
> request object.
> 

I think this would be an intriguing addition.

I've seen approaches to this in Turbine, and (I think) Enhydra, but I
don't know of any specific implementations based on Struts.

> It could be implemented around a server startup servlet which reads a config
> file, much like the Action servlet, and at designated intervals invokes the
> "action" class specified in the config file.  Instead of passing in the
> request object it would only be able to send the servlet context.  There are
> a lot of uses for something like this, for instance, downloading messages
> from a pop3 server, checking load info and sending out warnings, or anything
> that we might have used cron to do 'back in the day'. (Well, some of you may
> not know what Cron is and it's probably better that way ).
> 

Ah, you should really say nice things about cron!  That's where your
nightly builds of Struts come from, after all.  :-) :-) :-)

> I suppose it could be implemented entirely separate to Struts, however, it
> would make a nice addition.
> 

It seems to me that a generic "background job scheduling" class library
would be the way to do this, with a Struts-based administration front
end.  The back end part of this might also be appropriate to consider for
the Jakarta Commons project <http://jakarta.apache.org/commons> so that it
could be used (and enhanced by users of ;-) other environments as well.

> Taylor Cowan
> 

Craig