Using Sitecore Jobs

Sitecore contains a job system, allowing you to start and run jobs in the background. Jobs are perfect for long running operations. Scheduled tasks is jobs that is started at certain time.

Jobs have no HttpContext and, depending on how they are started, may run in a different context that you expect. For example, jobs started from the Scheuled tasks run in the “scheduler” context.

This is a madeup example on how to start a job that will traverse through Sitecore and do stuff to every item, starting from a certain root.

using System;
using Sitecore;
using Sitecore.Data.Items;
using Sitecore.Diagnostics;
using Sitecore.Jobs;
using Sitecore.Pipelines;
using Sitecore.SecurityModel;

namespace MyCode
{
  public class JobService
  {
    private string _JOBNAME = "MyJob";

    public Job Job
    {
      get { return JobManager.GetJob(_JOBNAME); }
    }

    public string StartJob(Item root)
    {
      JobOptions options = new JobOptions(_JOBNAME,
                                          "MyCode",
                                          Context.Site.Name,
                                          this,
                                          "ConvertData",
                                          new object[] {root});
      JobManager.Start(options);
      return _JOBNAME;
    }

    public void ConvertData(Item root)
    {
      ProcessAllItems(root);
      if (Job != null)
      {
        Job.Status.State = JobState.Finished;
      }
    }

    private void ProcessAllItems(Item item)
    {
      ProcessItem(item, pipeline);
      foreach (Item childItem in item.Children)
      {
        ProcessAllItems(childItem);
      }
    }

    private void ProcessItem(Item item)
    {
      if (Job != null)
      {
        Job.Status.Processed++;
        Job.Status.State = JobState.Running;
      }
      // Do something to my item
    }
  }
}

You can call the code like this:

JobService service = new JobService();
service.StartJob(Sitecore.Context.Item);

The job is created using the JobOptions class. This class create a Job with a job name and a category. The parameter “methodName” takes the name of a function to execute in the background. You include parameters using the last parameter.

When calling JobManager.Start() you execute the job in the background.

You can then use the Sitecore.Context.Job to get the current job for the current context. Or you can ask for a specific job (as I do in the “Job” property) using JobManager.GetJob().

A job have limited reporting capabilities, but you can use the Job.Status.Processed to indicate progress. You can even use the Job.Status.Total if you know beforehand how many operations the job is processing, and Sitecore Rocks will even convert the numbers displayed and show a percentage progress instead of a count. Use the Job.Status.State to indicate the status of your job (Initializing, Queued, Running, Finished).

Here is a simple example on how to check the status of a job:

protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
  JobService service = new JobService();
  if (service.Job != null)
  {
    Response.Write(string.Format("Job Status: {0}. Count: {1}", service.Job.Status.State, service.Job.Status.Processed));
  }
}

You can read more about jobs here:

• Alistair Deneys blog about long running operations include information on how to create a progress box in the Sitecore Shell.
  http://adeneys.wordpress.com/2011/03/17/long-running-process-options/
• iStern have written about running shceduled tasks with the JobManager in Sitecore
  http://blog.istern.dk/2011/10/06/running-scheduledtasks-with-the-jobmanager-in-sitecore/
• The open source module TaskManager implementes a Job Viewer
  http://trac.sitecore.net/TaskManager

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