Kata cron
May 3rd, 2009
I’m currently in search for new ideas of programming katas for the coding dojo.
A small feature really impressed me in Google App Engine: the new cron feature uses plain english to define the frequency of cron jobs. Have you ever add to decode standard crontab syntax?
"0 0 12 * * ?" means "Fire at 12pm (noon) every day". "0 15 10 ? * 6L" means "Fire at 10:15am on the last Friday of every month"
Which syntax do you prefer?
So here are two dojo ideas that I will try to develop using Ioke:
- Easiest: translate “* * * * *” syntax to plain english
- Harder: translate plain english to cron syntax