Scheduled Tasks

All tasks can be scheduled. This includes R, Julia, and Python scripts, R Markdown, and Quarto documents.

Items can be scheduled using cron syntax.

Timezones

All cron schedules are in UTC at present.

Scheduling

Tasks can be scheduled using the ricochet UI or the REST API.

Using the UI

You can schedule a task from the ricochet UI by navigating to the “Schedule” settings in the runtime configuration page (e.g., https://try.ricochet.rs/tasks/{item-id}/runtime).

Using the REST API

curl -X PATCH \
  'https://try.ricochet.rs/api/v0/content/01JT1AAJY0EVDE4C0277XX148R/schedule' \
  -H 'Authorization: Key rico_wuvV9j9JurM_H2cP4wCQiQVjeAbdsYce5MVyze9RqzSQp' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"schedule": "0 */2 * * *"}'

cron patterns

Traditional cron patterns can be provided using the following POSIX-like format:

┌──────────────── (optional) second (0 - 59)
│ ┌────────────── minute (0 - 59)
│ │ ┌──────────── hour (0 - 23)
│ │ │ ┌────────── day of month (1 - 31)
│ │ │ │ ┌──────── month (1 - 12, JAN-DEC)
│ │ │ │ │ ┌────── day of week (0 - 6, SUN-Mon)
│ │ │ │ │ │       (0 to 6 are Sunday to Saturday; 7 is Sunday, the same as 0)
│ │ │ │ │ │
* * * * * *

For example, to schedule an item to run every other hour use 0 */2 * * *.

Expression modifiers

cron expressions can also take advantage of the modifiers: L, #, and W.

Last modifiers

L is used to denote the last day of the week or month. This can be used in the “Day of Month” or “Day of Week” fields.

For example, "0 0 L * *" will schedule the item to be invoked every last day of the month. The * in the day of week field is ignored.

nth modifier

The # modifier can be used to specify which occurence of a particular day in a month. This can only be used in the “Day of Week” field.

For example, using 0 0 * * FRI#2 would specify the item to be invoked every second Friday of a month.

Closest Weekday modifier

The W modifier can be used to specify the closes weekday to a day of the month. This can only be utilized in the “Day of Month” field.

Using 10W will find the closest weekday to the 10th of the month. If the 10th falls on a Saturday, it will match to the 9th (Friday). Or if the 10th is a Sunday, it will be matched to the 11th (Monday).

Shorthands

Additionally, shorthand patterns can be specified:

@yearly    Run once a year, ie. "0 0 1 1 *".
@annually Run once a year, ie. "0 0 1 1 *".
@monthly  Run once a month, ie. "0 0 1 * *".
@weekly    Run once a week, ie. "0 0 * * 0".
@daily    Run once a day, ie. "0 0 * * *".
@hourly    Run once an hour, ie. "0 * * * *".