Cloud Scheduler quickstart

This quickstart walks you through performing the following basic operations using Cloud Scheduler:

• Create a Cloud Scheduler job.
• Set a recurring schedule for a job.
• Specify a Pub/Sub topic as the job target.
• Run a job.
• Verify success.

Cloud Scheduler has a free tier, so running this quickstart should not result in any costs. For more information, see Pricing.

Before you begin

Use the following instructions to prepare for this quickstart. You may have already done some of these steps.

Install and configure the gcloud command line tool:

1. Install and initialize the Cloud SDK

2. Update all components:

    gcloud components update
   

Create a project with an App Engine app.

Or you can use an existing project, if you have one.

1. Open a terminal on the machine where you installed the Cloud SDK and create a Cloud project:

    gcloud projects create [PROJECT_ID]
   

   where PROJECT_ID is the ID for the project you want to create. Project IDs must start with a lowercase letter and can have lowercase ASCII letters, digits or hyphens. They must be between 6 and 30 characters.

2. Configure gcloud to use the project you have chosen:

    gcloud config set project [PROJECT-ID]
   

   where PROJECT_ID is the ID you set previously.

3. Now create the app:

    gcloud app create [--region=REGION]
   

   where [REGION] is the location in which the app runs. Note that two locations, called europe-west and us-central in App Engine commands, are called, respectively, europe-west1 and us-central1 in Cloud Scheduler commands.

   You can check the region of an existing app with the command:

    gcloud app describe
   

   The region is listed by locationId. Your location, for example, might be shown as locationId: us-central.

   Once you set a zone for the App Engine app, you cannot change it.

Use the Google Cloud Console to enable features:

1. Enable billing for your project

2. Enable the Cloud Scheduler API

3. Enable the Pub/Sub API

Use gcloud to set up Pub/Sub:

1. Set up a Pub/Sub topic to use as a target for your cron job:

   gcloud pubsub topics create cron-topic
   

   This command creates a topic called 'cron-topic'. Make a note of the name because you use this later in the quickstart.

2. Create a Pub/Sub subscription; you need this to view the results of your job.

   gcloud pubsub subscriptions create cron-sub --topic cron-topic
   

Create a job

1. Visit the Cloud Scheduler page in the console:

   Cloud Scheduler

2. Click the Create job button.

3. Give your job a name and optionally add a description.

   

4. Specify the frequency for your job, using the unix-cron format.

   * * * * *
   

   See Configuring Cron Job Schedules for more information. Developers familiar with App Engine Cron format can also use that.

5. Select your timezone.

6. In the Target field, select Pub/Sub topic from the dropdown menu and enter the topic you created earlier (cron-topic).

7. Add a Payload string to be sent to your Pub/Sub target.

   

8. Click Create.

You now have a job that sends a message to your Pub/Sub topic every minute. Let's run the job you just created.

Run your job

1. In the Cloud Scheduler console page opened with your project, click the Run now button.

   The first job created in a project can take a few minutes to run the first time it is invoked, because of required configuration. So you might need to wait a bit.

2. View the results under the Result column.

   

Congratulations! You have just viewed the results in the console of running a cron job that sends a message to Pub/Sub. Next, you'll learn how to verify that Pub/Sub actually got the message.

Verify the results in Pub/Sub

To verify that your Pub/Sub topic is receiving messages from your job:

1. Invoke the following command:

    gcloud pubsub subscriptions pull cron-sub --limit 5
   

2. View the results. You should see output that looks roughly like the following

    +-------------+----------------+------------+-----------------------------+
    | DATA        | MESSAGE_ID     | ATTRIBUTES | ACK_ID                      |
    +-------------+----------------+------------+-----------------------------+
    | hello cron! | 56344662920621 |            | EkwnGERJUytDCypYEU4EISE-... |
    +-------------+----------------+------------+-----------------------------+
    | hello cron! | 56340561244339 |            | EkwnGERJUytDCypYEU4EISE-... |
    +-------------+----------------+------------+-----------------------------+
    | hello cron! | 56340388879975 |            | EkwnGERJUytDCypYEU4EISE-... |
    +-------------+----------------+------------+-----------------------------+
    | hello cron! | 56337745052761 |            | EkwnGERJUytDCypYEU4EISE...  |
    +-------------+----------------+------------+-----------------------------+
    | hello cron! | 56337890896134 |            | EkwnGERJUytDCypYEU4EISE-... |
    +-------------+----------------+------------+-----------------------------+
   

Clean up

To avoid incurring charges to your Google Cloud account for the resources used in this page, follow these steps.

Delete the Cloud Scheduler job

1. Go to the Cloud Scheduler page in the Cloud Console.

   Go to the Scheduler page

2. Click the checkbox next to your job.

3. Click the Delete button at the top of the page and confirm your delete.

Delete the Pub/Sub topic

1. Go to the Cloud Pub/Sub page in the Cloud Console.

   Go to the Pub/Sub page

2. Click the checkbox next to your topic.

3. Click Delete at the top of the page and confirm your delete.

Delete the project

If you created a project just for this quickstart.

Caution: Deleting a project has the following effects:

• Everything in the project is deleted. If you used an existing project for this tutorial, when you delete it, you also delete any other work you've done in the project.
• Custom project IDs are lost. When you created this project, you might have created a custom project ID that you want to use in the future. To preserve the URLs that use the project ID, such as an appspot.com URL, delete selected resources inside the project instead of deleting the whole project.

If you plan to explore multiple tutorials and quickstarts, reusing projects can help you avoid exceeding project quota limits.

1. In the Cloud Console, go to the Manage resources page.

   Go to Manage resources

2. In the project list, select the project that you want to delete, and then click Delete.
3. In the dialog, type the project ID, and then click Shut down to delete the project.

What's next

• Learn more about Configuring Cron Job Schedules
• Learn how to view Cloud Scheduler logs