Creating a new task

The preferred method for creating a scheduler task is as a symfony command. Read about how to create and use symfony commands in TYPO3 here.

Working with serialized objects

When a task is registered with the Scheduler the corresponding object instance is serialized and stored in the database (see Appendix A for more details). This is not a very common practice. There are advantages but also some pitfalls, so please read this section carefully.

A serialized object may happen to be "out of sync" with its class if the class changes some of its variables or methods. If a variable's name is changed or if variables are added or removed, the serialized object will not reflect these changes. The same goes if a method is renamed, added or deleted. Problems will also arise if the number or order of arguments used to call a method are changed. In such cases weird errors may appear, which can be very difficult to track. The only solution is to delete the registered task and register it anew.

To minimize such risks it is worth to consider implementing the business logic in a separate class, so that the task class itself changes as little as possible. The execute() should be as simple as possible. Consider the following:

class MyTask extends \TYPO3\CMS\Scheduler\Task\AbstractTask {
	public function execute() {
		$businessLogic = \TYPO3\CMS\Core\Utility\GeneralUtility::makeInstance(\Vendor\Extension\BusinessLogic::class);
		$businessLogic->run(arg1, arg2, …);
	}
}
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In such a setup the execute() is kept to the strict minimum and the operations themselves are handled by a separate class.

Also remember that the constructor is not called when unserializing an object. If some operations need to be run upon unserialization, implement a __wakeup() method instead.

Saving a task's state

The task's state is saved automatically at the start of its execution. If you need to save a task's state at some point during its execution, you can simply call the task's own save() method.