Provide time zone to Spring @Scheduled?

Question

How can I configure the time zone for a Spring based @Scheduled cron job?

Background:

I have a job that executes once a day, say 2 PM, using Spring's @Scheduled annotation:

@Scheduled(cron = "0 0 14 * * *")
public void execute() {
    // do scheduled job
}

The problem is that 2 PM differs between different servers, because Spring uses on TimeZone.getDefault() internally. Moreover, the JavaDoc of TimeZone.getDefault() states that:

Gets the default TimeZone for this host. The source of the default TimeZone may vary with implementation.

In other words, the time zone is not determined. It may depend on JVM implementation, server time zone configuration, server location, and / or other unknown factors. Consequently, the cron job triggers on different times on different servers, unless there is a way to explicitly set which time zone that should be used?

I am using Spring 3.2.2.

---

Update

As of Spring 4, Spring Jira issue SPR-10456 has been resolved. Consequently, the @Scheduled annotation has a new zone attribute for exactly this purpose.

Agglomerate

possible duplicate of Initialize default Locale and Timezone with Spring configuration – Wellbalanced

@Wellbalanced The question is related, but in my opinion not the same. The link that you provided describes how to set the default time zone on a system level, whereas I am only interested in specifying the time zone for the cron job. – Agglomerate

Oh well, looks like the solution is already mentioned in the question, but I didn't find it in the answers when I was looking for one. – Evaporation

Answer 1

It turned out that I could not use the @Scheduled annotation, but I implemented a work-around. In the JavaDoc of the SchedulingConfigurer it is stated that:

[SchedulingConfigurer is] Typically used for setting a specific TaskScheduler bean to be used when executing scheduled tasks or for registering scheduled tasks in a programmatic fashion as opposed to the declarative approach of using the @Scheduled annotation.

Next, I changed the cron job to implement the Runnable interface and then updated my configuration file to implement the SchedulingConfigurer, see below:

@Configuration
@EnableScheduling
@ComponentScan("package.that.contains.the.runnable.job.bean")
public class JobConfiguration implements SchedulingConfigurer {

    private static final String cronExpression = "0 0 14 * * *";
    private static final String timeZone = "CET";

    @Autowired
    private Runnable cronJob;

    @Bean
    CronTrigger cronTrigger() {
        return new CronTrigger(cronExpression, TimeZone.getTimeZone(timeZone));
    }

    @Override
    public void configureTasks(ScheduledTaskRegistrar taskRegistrar) {
        taskRegistrar.addCronTask(new CronTask(job, cronTrigger()));
    }
}

Please read the JavaDoc of the @EnableScheduling for more information.

---

Update

As of Spring 4, Spring Jira issue SPR-10456 has been resolved. Consequently, the @Scheduled annotation has a new zone attribute for exactly this purpose, e.g.

@Scheduled(cron = "0 0 14 * * *", zone = "CET")
public void execute() {
    // do scheduled job
}

Agglomerate

A usage example of the timezone in the @scheduled annotation would be @Scheduled(cron = "0 0/60 * * * ?",zone = "Asia/Colombo") – Peppard

@Agglomerate I have followed your solution as I am also dealing with timezones along with cronTrigger, and my code is not working properly. Can you please check my code and guide me if I have went wrong anywhere? Here is the link: #31370793 – Dressing

@IshanThilinaSomasiri Can you please help me by checking this link, #31370793 – Dressing

@IshanThilinaSomasiri My doubt is, When cronTrigger() is built in WebConfig.java which contains both timezone & cron expression, how can we pass the same timezone & cron expression for @Scheduled(cron = "0 0/60 * * * ?", zone = "Asia/Colombo") in the different class where the method is present which has logic to run based of cron job.? – Dressing

You can find yours from this list: joda-time.sourceforge.net/timezones.html – Overheat

I need to run for multiple time zones and I need to do it in a single scheduled job, is that possible? – Earmuff

@Earmuff I don't think so. One alternative is to create a single doWork() method. Next, add one @Scheduled method for each time zone that calls the doWork() method. Optionally, the doWork() can may also have one or more parameters for further customisation. For some problems another option may be to create a cron expression that triggers on scheduled intervals (e.g. every six hours), but then you don't have control over specific time zones. – Agglomerate

Answer 2

There is element zone in annotation @Scheduled, starting from version 4.0.

You can insert a timezone as a string that can be accepted by java.util.TimeZone.

Evaporation

etc @Scheduled(cron = "0 10 19 * * FRI", zone = "CET") – Wop

Answer 3

Your code should be like this:

@Scheduled(cron = "0 0 14 * * *", zone = "GMT-5")
    public void execute() {
     // do scheduled job
}

"Zone" is gonna be the desired country's timezone.

Here is a nice tutorial about scheduled tasks with Spring:

https://www.baeldung.com/cron-expressions

Ermelindaermengarde

Answer 4

You can also use time zone with @Scheduled tag in spring-boot like this :

@Scheduled(cron = "0 0 14 * * *" , zone = "GMT+5:00")
public void execute() {
    // do the scheduled job
}

Livery

Answer 5

I doubt you want different jobs or parts of application to use different time zones. Assuming you want to have it all consistent and DRY, either configure OS on all servers to have consistent time zone, or set user.timezone Java system property for all of the application servers. Centrally manage configuration (OS, application server), and for that puppet and chef can be very useful.

Maternal

Generally, I agree, and our servers are all configured to use the same time zone. Our servers need to interact with a third party server on a regular basis, hence the cron job. The problem is that the external server has a scheduled maintenance window during which we cannot interact with it, and that maintenance window is based on a different time zone than our servers. Of course, we could have configured all our servers to use the same time zone as the third party server, but we rather keep the coupling to external sources as limited as possible. – Agglomerate