How to run a batch process in regular interval

Question

I need to Unpublish the nodes which are all not Updated for more than some specified time.

I'm having the query to fetch nodes and by using a batch process I will Unpublish those nodes one by one.

Now I want to schedule this operation to be run every day. How can I achieve that? using drush or something.

I have cron running at regular intervals. I need to run these scripts apart from the cron job i.e as a separate one.

Answer 1

You can use cron to do this, set a cron time in admin/config/system/cron for your site.

there is a hook_cron() is available in your drupal . using that hook you can configure your batch process to invoke.

Answer 2

I can achieve it by using a Cron job and Batch/Queue as mentioned by Anoop Joseph with some changes

Method I - Using Cron and queue

• Cron will run the query and push the list of nodes to the queue
• queue will pick the items one by one and Unpublish them

Method - II Using Cron and batch

• Cron will run the query and push the list of nodes to the Batch process
• Batch process will be launched programmatically using background_process module

In both methods Cron can be configured in such way that It runs the query once for every day by storing the last run time in a variable

Answer 3

The batch api is primary design to work with forms and it depends what is the purpose of your use, but you can create a function that mimic form submission, and then you can use batch together with cron, assume you have function that will be triggered by a rule on cron run, so this function is function1:

<?php
function function1 () {
    $form_state = array();
    $form_state['values']['hidden_value'] = 1;
    $form_state['values']['op'] = 'Test';
    $form_state['values']['submit'] = 'Test';
    drupal_form_submit('function1_batch_form',
    $form_state);
} 
function function1_batch_form($form, &$form_state) {
  $form['hidden_value'] = array(
    '#type' => 'hidden',
    '#value' => 1,
  );
  return $form;
}
function function1_batch_form_submit($form, &$form_state) {
  if ($form_state['values']['hidden_value'] == 1) {
    $batch = function1_batch_process($date);
    batch_set($batch);
  }
}
?>

Answer 4

I know this is an old thread, but if you really need things running at different times I might tackle it like this:

Start by setting up a rule with a custom rules action. You can use any logic you want here (because it's in a module using hook_action), I would check for a cache of nodes and process up-to X number of them if a cache is found or create a new cache and process up to X number of them if there is no cache.

The next part would be to set up the rule to happen on a specific page load and request that page with cron at whatever interval you want.