Rails cron with whenever, setting the environment - ruby-on-rails

Question

This question will probably only make sense if you know about the whenever gem for creating cron jobs. I have a task in my schedule.rb like
every 1.day, :at => '4am' do
command "cd #{RAILS_ROOT} && rake thinking_sphinx:stop RAILS_ENV=#{RAILS_ENV}"
command "cd #{RAILS_ROOT} && rake thinking_sphinx:index RAILS_ENV=#{RAILS_ENV}"
command "cd #{RAILS_ROOT} && rake thinking_sphinx:start RAILS_ENV=#{RAILS_ENV}"
end
However when I update my crontab using
whenever --update-crontab appname --set environment=production
the cron jobs still have RAILS_ENV=development. My tasks on production and development are the same right now, I just need to change the environment variable because thinking_sphinx needs to know the current environment. Any ideas on how to do this?
Thanks!

Answer 1

Whenever doesn't detect your environment, it just defaults to using production.
You can set the environment for all jobs using set:
set :environment, 'staging'
Or per job:
every 2.hours do
runner 'My.runner', :environment => 'staging'
end

Answer 2

Don't write the RAILS_ENV variable. It should set it automatically.
every 1.day, :at => '4am' do
command "cd #{RAILS_ROOT} && rake thinking_sphinx:stop"
command "cd #{RAILS_ROOT} && rake thinking_sphinx:index"
command "cd #{RAILS_ROOT} && rake thinking_sphinx:start"
end
It works in my app:
every 4.days do
runner "AnotherModel.prune_old_records"
end
$ whenever --set environment=production
0 0 1,5,9,13,17,21,25,29 * * /Users/weppos/Sites/git/app/script/runner -e production "AnotherModel.prune_old_records"
$ whenever --set environment=development
0 0 1,5,9,13,17,21,25,29 * * /Users/weppos/Sites/git/app/script/runner -e development "AnotherModel.prune_old_records"

Answer 3

For Whenever (0.9.2)
Use the #environment variable for environment check:
case #environment
when 'production'
every 1.minutes do
rake "user:take_sample"
end
when 'development'
every 1.minutes do
rake "user:dev_sample"
end
end

Answer 4

Something else you may want to try if you're using bundler and capistrano.
In your deploy.rb file, when you set the :whenever_command, DO NOT simply do this:
set :whenever_command, "bundle exec whenever"
Instead, do this:
set(:whenever_command) { "RAILS_ENV=#{rails_env} bundle exec whenever" }
Now, the RAILS_ENV environment variable will be available when the schedule.rb file is loaded, so in schedule.rb you can now do this:
set :environment, ENV['RAILS_ENV']
Voila! You're ready to go.

Answer 5

This questions has been open a long time so I thought I would share what worked with whenever 0.9.7, Ruby 2.4.0, and RAILS 5.0.1. In the previously mentioned answer there are a lot of close tries but syntax error plagues them. Below is what worked and is very simple approach.
schedule.rb
require File.expand_path(File.dirname(__FILE__) + '/environment')
set :output, {:standard => 'log/cron_log.log', :error => 'log/cron_error_log.log'}
env :PATH, ENV['PATH']
every :day, :at => '10am' do
rake "somejob:run", :environment => #environment
end
Update the crontab(dev)
whenever --set 'environment=development' --update-crontab
Results(dev)
0 10 * * * /bin/bash -l -c 'cd /my/rails/app && RAILS_ENV=development bundle exec rake somejob:run --silent >> log/cron_log.log 2>> log/cron_error_log.log'
Update the crontab(prod)
whenever --set 'environment=production' --update-crontab
Results(prod)
0 10 * * * /bin/bash -l -c 'cd /my/rails/app && RAILS_ENV=production bundle exec rake somejob:run --silent >> log/cron_log.log 2>> log/cron_error_log.log'
Hopefully this can help someone out.
Happy Coding this!

Answer 6

Watch out if you want to pass more than one param to whenever.
You have to do it like that:
whenever --update-crontab appname --set 'environment=production&cron_log=/path/to/log'

Answer 7

Latest whenever allows easy Capistrano integration. You can add following to deploy.rb:
set :whenever_environment, defer { stage }
set :whenever_identifier, defer { "#{application}-#{stage}" }
require "whenever/capistrano"

Answer 8

I was having an issue where environment wasn't being set up for whenever cron jobs - /usr/bin/bundle was being picked up instead of /usr/local/bin/bundle.
The solution was to add following to top of schedule.rb
env 'PATH', ENV['PATH']

Answer 9

Add the following line of code at top of config/schedule.rb.
ENV['RAILS_ENV'] = "#{#pre_set_variables[:environment]}"
and update the crontab using following command.
whenever --update-crontab pvcnxt --set 'environment=production'
and then finally restart crontab using command
service crond restart
Thats it!
Final config/schedule.rb looks this way
ENV['RAILS_ENV'] = "#{#pre_set_variables[:environment]}"
env :PATH, ENV['PATH']
require File.expand_path(File.dirname(__FILE__) + "/environment")
set :output, "#{Rails.root}/logs/cron_log_#{ENV['RAILS_ENV']}.log"
every 1.day, :at => '00:00 am' do
command "cd #{Rails.root}/lib/tasks && rake clean__posts_table_rake"
end

Answer 10

I would consider using the "rake" shortcut to make it even cleaner:
every 1.day, :at => '4am' do
rake "thinking_sphinx:stop"
rake "thinking_sphinx:index"
rake "thinking_sphinx:start"
end