Immediate Execution of ScheduledTask with Cron Expression on Creation

ServiceStack
1

I notice that when I create my scheduled task for the first time at application startup, it executes immediately even though it was created with a cron expression many hours in the future. Is this normal behavior? Is there a way to prevent that? If i would use the RunAfter with the same datetime of the next cron execution, will it fire twice? Or I could find the next cron execution and then prevent it from running if it is now yet the time?

2

You would need to set the Scheduled Task’s LastRun in the db, something like:

IBackgroundJobs jobs = feature.Jobs; // or IOC
using var dbJobs = jobs.OpenDb();
dbJobs.UpdateOnly(() => new ScheduledTask {
      LastRun = DateTime.UtcNow,
}, where:x => x.Name == taskName);
3

Hi @mythz , thanks, your trick does it!
Now, there is another little thing…I have some issues WHEN the scheduled tasks runs…

It runs at my expected local time only If I convert the Cron expression to UTC …
Can you explain how the library works with Time Zones, Daylight saving etc…

Right now, in my EST tz (UTC-5), I was expecting 0 7,15,23 * * * to work but I had to use 0 4,12,20 * * *
which is very weird. Now, when we go in DST (UTC-4)… what is going to happen?

4

Everything is stored and parsed as UTC, so you have to keep using UTC.