Script for running Cron on all sites in a shared Drupal instance

After realizing that the sympal_scripts were silently failing to properly call cron.php on sites served from subdirectories on a shared Drupal multisite instance, I rolled up my sleeves to build a script that actually worked. What I’ve come up with works, but is likely not the cleanest or most efficient way of doing things. But it works. Which is better than the solution I had earlier today.

I also took the chance to get more familiar with Ruby. I could have come up with a shell script solution, but I wanted the flexibility to more easily extend the script as needed. And I wanted the chance to play with Ruby in a non-Hello-World scenario.

Here’s the code:

#!/usr/local/bin/ruby

# Drupal multisite hosting auto cron.php runner
# Initial draft version by D'Arcy Norman dnorman@darcynorman.net
# URL goes here
# Idea and some code from a handy page by (some unidentified guy) at http://whytheluckystiff.net/articles/wearingRubySlippersToWork.html

require 'net/http'

# this script assumes that $base_url has been properly set in each site's settings.php file.
# further, it assumes that it is at the START of a line, with spacing as follows:
# $base_url = 'http://mywonderfuldrupalserver.com/site';
# also further, it assumes there is no comment before nor after the content of that line.

# customize this variable to point to your Drupal directory
drupalsitesdir = '/usr/www/drupal' # no trailing slash

Dir[drupalsitesdir + '/sites/**/*.php'].each do |path|
  File.open(path) do |f|
    f.grep( /^\$base_url = / ) do |line|
      line = line.strip();
      baseurl = line.gsub('$base_url = \'', '')
      baseurl = baseurl.gsub('\';', '')
      baseurl = baseurl.gsub('  // NO trailing slash!', '')

      if !baseurl.empty?
        cronurl = baseurl + "/cron.php"
        puts cronurl

        if !cronurl.empty?
          url = URI.parse(cronurl)
          req = Net::HTTP::Get.new(url.path)
          res = Net::HTTP.start(url.host, url.port) {|http|http.request(req)}
          puts res.body
        end
      end
    end
  end
end

No warranty, no guarantee. It works on my servers, and on my PowerBook.

Some caveats:

• It requires a version of Ruby more recent than what ships on MacOSX 10.3 server. Easy enough to update, following the Ruby on Rails installation instructions.
• It requires $base_url to be set in the settings.php file for each site you want to run cron.php on automatically.
• It requires one trivial edit to the script, telling it where Drupal lives on your machine. I might take a look at parameterizing this so it could be run more flexibily.
• It requires cron (or something similar) to trigger the script on a regular basis.

Tagged as: code, drupal, hosting, ruby