Laravel Schedulable

Schedule and Unschedule any eloquent model elegantly without cron job.

Salient Features:

1. Turn any Eloquent Model into a schedulable one by using Schedulable trait in the model.

2. Schedule Models to a time in future and they will be returned in query results at specified date and time.

3. Reschedule and Unschedule at any time using simple methods.

4. Hook into the model's life cycle via custom model events provided by the package.

5. Override the default column name and use your own custom column name.

Some example use cases when this package can be useful:

1. A Blog type application which allows bloggers to schedule their post to go public on a future date and time.

2. An E-commerce website where the items in the inventory can be added at any time from the admin panel but they can be scheduled to be made available to the customers at a particular date and time.

Minimum Requirements

1. Laravel 6.0
2. PHP 7.2

Installation

composer require neelkanthk/laravel-schedulable

Usage

1. Create a migration to add schedule_at column in any table using package's scheduleAt(); method which creates a column with name schedule_at.

NOTE: If you want to use any other column name then simply use the $table->timestamp('column_name'); method as shown below in examples.

use Illuminate\Database\Migrations\Migration;
use Illuminate\Database\Schema\Blueprint;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Schema;

class AddScheduleAtColumnInPosts extends Migration
{
    /**
     * Run the migrations.
     *
     * @return void
     */
    public function up()
    {
        Schema::table('posts', function (Blueprint $table) {
            $table->scheduleAt(); //Using default schedule_at column
			//or
            $table->timestamp('publish_at', 0)->nullable(); //Using custom column name
        });
    }

    /**
     * Reverse the migrations.
     *
     * @return void
     */
    public function down()
    {
        Schema::table('posts', function (Blueprint $table) {
            $table->dropColumn('schedule_at'); //Using default schedule_at column
            //or
            $table->dropColumn('publish_at'); //Using custom column name
        });
    }
}

2. Use the Neelkanth\Laravel\Schedulable\Traits\Schedulable trait in any Model.

NOTE: If you have used a custom column name in the migration then you have to specify that column in the Model as shown below.

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;
use Neelkanth\Laravel\Schedulable\Traits\Schedulable;

class Post extends Model
{
    use Schedulable;
    
    const SCHEDULE_AT = "publish_at"; //Specify the custom column name
}

Usage

1. Scheduling a model

$scheduleAt = Carbon::now()->addDays(10); //Carbon is just an example. You can pass any object which is implementing DateTimeInterface.
$post = new App\Post();
//Add values to other attributes
$post->scheduleWithoutSaving($scheduleAt); // Modifies the schedule_at attribute and returns the current model object without saving it.
$post->schedule($scheduleAt); //Saves the model in the database and returns boolean true or false

2. Unscheduling a model

$post = App\Post::find(1);
$post->unscheduleWithoutSaving(); // Modifies the schedule_at attribute and returns the current model object without saving it.
$post->unschedule(); //Saves the model in the database and returns boolean true or false

3. Events and Observers

The package provides four model events and Observer methods which the developers can use to hook in the model's lifecycle.

The schedule() method fires two events namely scheduling before saving the model and scheduled after saving the model.

The unschedule() method fires two events namely unscheduling before saving the model and unscheduled after saving the model.

The above events can be caught in the Observer class as follows:

namespace App\Observers;

use App\Post;

class PostObserver
{
    public function scheduling(Post $post)
    {
        //
    }

    public function scheduled(Post $post)
    {
        //
    }

    public function unscheduling(Post $post)
    {
        //
    }

    public function unscheduled(Post $post)
    {
        //
    }
}

4. Fetching data using queries

We will assume below posts table as reference to the following examples:

id	title	created_at	updated_at	schedule_at
1	Toy Story 1	2020-06-01 12:15:00	NULL	NULL
2	Toy Story 2	2020-08-02 16:10:12	NULL	2020-08-10 10:10:00
3	Toy Story 3	2020-10-10 10:00:10	NULL	2021-12-20 00:00:00
4	Terminator 2	2020-10-11 00:00:00	NULL	2021-11-12 15:10:17

For the following examples, Suppose the current timestamp is 2020-10-18 00:00:00.

1. Default

By default all those models are fetched in which the schedule_at column is having NULL value or a timestamp less than or equal to the current timestamp.

So a eloquent query

$posts = App\Post::get();

will return Toy Story 1 and Toy Story 2

2. Retrieving scheduled models in addition to the normal.

To retrieve scheduled models in addition to the normal models, use the withScheduled() method.

$posts = App\Post::withScheduled()->get();

The above query will return all the four rows in the above table.

3. Retrieving only scheduled models without normal.

To retrieve only scheduled models use the onlyScheduled() method.

$posts = App\Post::onlyScheduled()->get();

The above query will return Toy Story 3 and Terminator 2.

4. Do not apply any functionality provided by Schedulable.

In some cases you may not want to apply the Schedulable trait at all. In those cases use the withoutGlobalScope() method in your query.

use Neelkanth\Laravel\Schedulable\Scopes\SchedulableScope;

$posts = App\Post::withoutGlobalScope(SchedulableScope::class)->get();

A general use case example.

// routes/web.php
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Route;
use Neelkanth\Laravel\Schedulable\Scopes\SchedulableScope;

/*
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Web Routes
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
| Here is where you can register web routes for your application. These
| routes are loaded by the RouteServiceProvider within a group which
| contains the "web" middleware group. Now create something great!
|
*/

Route::get('/schedule/post', function () {
    $post = new App\Post();
    $post->title = "My scheduled post";
    $scheduleAt = Carbon\Carbon::now()->addDays(10);
    $post->schedule($scheduleAt);
    return $post; //The scheduled post's ID is 1
});


Route::get('/unschedule/post', function () {

    // To unschedule a post you have to fetch the scheduled post first.
    // But becuase the Schedulable trait is used in App\Post model it will not a fetch a post whose schedule_at column value is in future.
    
    $post = App\Post::find(1);  //This will return null for a scheduled post whose id is 1.
    
    //To retreive a scheduled post you can use any of the two methods given below.

    $post = App\Post::withScheduled()->find(1); //1. Using withScheduled() [Recommended]

    $post = App\Post::withoutGlobalScope(SchedulableScope::class)->find(1); //2. Using withoutGlobalScope()
    
    $post->unschedule();
});

Contributing

Pull requests are welcome. For major changes, please open an issue first to discuss what you would like to change.

Security

If you discover any security-related issues, please email [email protected] instead of using the issue tracker.

Credits

• Neelkanth Kaushik
• All Contributors

License

MIT