Add the whenever gem for cron jobs

[hpjaj]

Feature

Why is this feature being added?

We need to be able to have recurring cron jobs ran, on our behalf. For example, to hit GitHub's API, or the Meetup API, on a daily basis, to pull in current statistics or Meetup events.

The whenever gem is a perfect tool to solve this.

This issue will complete the implementation for #153

What should your feature do?

• Install the whenever gem
• Write a shell script for it
• Update the Dockerfile to call the script instead of the current CMD

[hpjaj]

@rickr - ping

[hpjaj]

@ohaiwalt - curious if this issue is something you’re able to do?

I can take care of installing the whenever gem. Would need your assistance on the second two bullet points.

[hollomancer]

@hpjaj, would this implementation accomplish what you need?
http://derekbarber.ca/blog/2015/09/10/scheduling-background-jobs-in-rails-using-sidekiq/

[hpjaj]

@hollomancer - Nice find. The only issue is deploying the setup to the server. It "seems" like we would need to do similar config, as what we would need for just using the Whenever gem by itself.

But I don't know. That would be a question for @rickr or @ohaiwalt ?

Whichever approach is easier for them to setup, I can take care of the rest.

[hollomancer]

I think that in this case, it would just be happening in the same pod as operationcode_backend, wouldn't it? That would skip items 2 and 3.

[hpjaj]

¯_(ツ)_/¯

The part of the article I am unsure on is the Deploying Your Background Jobs, since we do not use capistrano.

Are you thinking that we can just setup a config/deploy.rb file as they describe, merge to master and deploy, and it would just work?

If yes, then yes, this would be a great option.

[hollomancer]

I'm not familiar with Capistrano - but yeah, I would think we would call whenever --update-crontab somewhere like .travis.yml or bin/deploy

[hpjaj]

Yeah, that is the missing link for me, too. @ohaiwalt ?

[hollomancer]

Let's go ahead and get what we need in terms of cronjobs specified - we can worry about the deployment piece afterwards.