Scheduling a Visualizer Build

App Factory provides the ability to create triggers, which are specialized jobs that are used to automate and run tasks for your projects.

Consider a scenario in which a developer wants to implement a nightly build system. The administrator can create a scheduler that runs the build jobs for the app at a specified time (such as 12AM) everyday.

Every project contains a sub-folder called Triggers in the Visualizer folder. The Triggers folder contains a job called createTrigger (to create auto-triggered jobs), and two sub-folders called watchers and schedulers (to store the created jobs).

Configuring a Scheduler Job in App Factory

  1. From the folder of your project, navigate to the Triggers sub-folder.

  2. In the Triggers folder, click the build icon for the createTrigger job.
    Alternatively, select the createTrigger job, and then select the Build with Parameters option from the left panel.

  3. For the CRON_SCHEDULE parameter, type a Cron expression that corresponds to the time at which the build job must be triggered.
    For information about cron expressions, refer to Cron.

  4. Configure the remaining parameters, which are the same as the buildVisualizer job.

Jobs that are triggered by Cron expressions are stored in the Schedulers folder. Every Scheduler contains a cron string in the name to simplify searches.

Schedule Nightly Builds

You might have a requirement to build applications at night on a regular basis. Nightly builds provide better performance and efficient resource allocation. Nightly builds are also used for solid product building and testing without ongoing development.

To configure a nightly build for your project, create a Scheduler for your project as mentioned earlier (Configuring Auto-triggered Jobs on App Factory). For the CRON_SCHEDULE parameter, type the Cron expression: 0 0 * * *. The createTriggers job creates the Schedule_0 0 * * * job in the Schedulers folder. This job is launched everyday at 00:00 hrs (12:00 AM).