Scheduled Task Monitors

A common need in task monitoring is being notified if a scheduled task fails or doesn't run. It is easy to determine if tasks are successful using the task itself but detecting if a task fails or does not run at all requires a separate system.

This is where Task Badger Monitors can help.

By registering a task with Task Badger you can be sure that if the task fails or takes too long you will get notified.

But what if the task never runs at all and never gets registered with Task Badger? We've got you covered there too. By telling Task Badger when you expect the task to run we can check and make sure that it does actually run when it's supposed to.

Creating a monitor

Monitors are created via the Task Badger web UI. When creating a monitor you will need to chose between two types: "interval" and "cron".

Interval Monitors

Use an interval monitor when your tasks are scheduled in a chain (one after the other) and not based on real time.

For example, a task that runs every 5 minutes where each task is scheduled after the previous task starts / ends.

Cron Monitors

Use a cron monitor when you need more advanced scheduling or when your tasks are executed based on real time, for example, once per hour, on the hour.

Cron monitor require writing cron schedule expressions. Cron expressions are split up in 5 fields as follows:

# ┌───────────── minute (0 - 59)
# │ ┌───────────── hour (0 - 23)
# │ │ ┌───────────── day of the month (1 - 31)
# │ │ │ ┌───────────── month (1 - 12)
# │ │ │ │ ┌───────────── day of the week (0 - 6) (Sunday to Saturday;
# │ │ │ │ │                                   7 is also Sunday on some systems)
# │ │ │ │ │
# │ │ │ │ │
# * * * * *

Here are some examples:

Expression	Description
1 0 * * *	Daily at 1 minute past midnight
0 */2 * * *	Every 2nd hour
45 23 * * 6	23:45 every Saturday (day 6)

For a more detailed explanation see Wikipedia.

Set Up

Once you have created a monitor you need to configure your tasks to notify Task Badger when they run.

Using the CLI

The CLI provides an easy way to monitor your tasks. To associate a task with a monitor simply provide the monitor ID:

$ taskbadger run "run script" --monitor-id=XYZ -- path/to/script.sh

Using the API

PythonShell

from taskbadger import Task, StatusEnum
task = Task.create(name"my-task", status=StatsuEnum.processing, monitor_id="XYZ")
try:
    # Execute your task here...
except Exception as e:
    task.error({
        "exception": str(e)
    })
else:
    task.update(status=StatusEnum.success)

Using the API directly you can pass the monitor ID vai the X-TASKBADGER-MONITOR header. The monitor ID only needs to be included in the request to create the task.

curl -X POST "https://taskbadger.net/api/${ORG}/${PROJECT}/tasks/" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer ${API_KEY}" \
  -H "X-TASKBADGER-MONITOR: %{MONITOR_ID}" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"name": "demo task", "status": "processing"}'
# Response { "id": "128aoa98e0fiq238" ...}

# Execute your scheduled task here...

curl -X PATCH "https://taskbadger.net/api/${ORG}/${PROJECT}/tasks/128aoa98e0fiq238/" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer ${API_KEY}" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"status": "success"}'