Laravel 11 Cron Job Task Scheduling Tutorial

Efficient task automation is a cornerstone of modern web applications, and Laravel 11 makes it easier than ever with its robust task scheduling system. Gone are the days of manually configuring cron jobs for individual tasks.

With Laravel’s elegant syntax and powerful schedule method, you can manage repetitive actions like sending emails, cleaning up databases, or generating reports, all within your application code. In this tutorial, we’ll walk you through setting up cron job task scheduling in Laravel 11.

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Let’s get started.

Laravel Installation

To create a laravel project, run this command into project terminal

composer create-project laravel/laravel demo-app

Create New Laravel Command

Next, we’ll create a custom command that will run with task scheduling using a cron job. Use the following command to generate a new custom command:

php artisan make:command DemoCron --command=demo:cron

It will create a file DemoCron.php inside app/Console/Commands folder.

Open command file and write this code into it,

<?php
  
namespace App\Console\Commands;
  
use Illuminate\Console\Command;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Http;
use App\Models\User;
  
class DemoCron extends Command
{
    /**
     * The name and signature of the console command.
     *
     * @var string
     */
    protected $signature = 'demo:cron';

    /**
     * The console command description.
     *
     * @var string
     */
    protected $description = 'Command description';
  
    /**
     * Execute the console command.
     */
    public function handle()
    {
        info("Cron Job running at ". now());
      
        $response = Http::get('https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/users');
          
        $users = $response->json();
      
        if (!empty($users)) {
            foreach ($users as $key => $user) {
                if(!User::where('email', $user['email'])->exists() ){
                    User::create([
                        'name' => $user['name'],
                        'email' => $user['email'],
                        'password' => bcrypt('123456789')
                    ]);
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

Register as Task Scheduler

Now, we’ll define our commands in the console.php file, specifying the schedule for when each command should run, as shown in the following example:

Add Console Route

Open console.php file from routes folder,

<?php
  
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Schedule;
  
Schedule::command('demo:cron')->everyMinute();

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Run Scheduler Command For Test

Now we’re ready to run our cron job.

You can manually check its execution using the following command:

php artisan schedule:run

After running the above command, you can check the log file where we’ve printed some text for verification.

Open your log file to see the output, which should look similar to the following:

[2025-01-05 03:51:02] local.INFO: Cron Job running at 2024-01-05 03:51:02  
[2024-01-05 03:52:01] local.INFO: Cron Job running at 2024-01-05 03:52:01  
[2024-01-05 03:53:02] local.INFO: Cron Job running at 2024-01-05 03:53:02  

Laravel 11 Cron Job Setup on Server

Here’s how to set up a cron job command on your server.

If you’re using an Ubuntu server, crontab is usually pre-installed. Run the following command to add a new entry for your cron job:

crontab -e

Now, add the following line to your crontab file. Ensure you replace <path-to-your-project> with the correct path to your project:

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

That’s it.

We hope this article helped you to learn about Laravel 11 Cron Job Task Scheduling Tutorial in a very detailed way.

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