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backend scheduling recommended

Cron & Scheduled Tasks Patterns

Scheduled task patterns covering cron syntax, job scheduling, distributed locking, monitoring, and production best practices.

Difficulty
intermediate
Read time
1 min read
Version
v1.0.0
Confidence
established
Last updated

Quick Reference

Cron Jobs: Use distributed locks to prevent concurrent execution. Log start/end times. Set timeouts shorter than interval. Monitor execution and alert on failures. Use node-cron for simple, BullMQ for complex scheduling. Avoid minute 0 (load spike). Make jobs idempotent. Store execution history.

Use When

  • Periodic data sync
  • Report generation
  • Cleanup tasks
  • Health checks
  • Billing cycles

Skip When

  • One-time tasks
  • Event-driven processing
  • Real-time requirements

Cron & Scheduled Tasks Patterns

Scheduled task patterns covering cron syntax, job scheduling, distributed locking, monitoring, and production best practices.

Tags

cron scheduling jobs automation tasks

Discussion