How to Create a Custom Timer Job in SharePoint 2010

Creating Custom Timer Job in SharePoint 2010

In this post I will show you how to create Custom Timer Job in SharePoint 2010 but you must know this post is based on Creating Custom SharePoint Timer Jobs ,So let us start

Create Custom List and name it  ListTimerJob

Open Visual Studio 2010 >File > New >Project >SharePoint 2010>Empty SharePoint Project. >Name it Custom_TimerJob>Ok

Check Deploy as farm solution>Finish

create a class that inherits from the Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPJobDefinition class. To implement this class, you need to create a few constructors and override the Execute() method as following

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01	namespace DotnetFinder
02	{

03	class ListTimerJob : SPJobDefinition
04	{

05	public ListTimerJob()
06

07	: base()
08	{

09
10	}

11
12	public ListTimerJob(string jobName, SPService service, SPServer server, SPJobLockType targetType)

13
14	: base(jobName, service, server, targetType)

15	{
16

17	}
18

19	public ListTimerJob(string jobName, SPWebApplication webApplication)
20

21	: base(jobName, webApplication, null, SPJobLockType.ContentDatabase)
22	{

23
24	this.Title = "List Timer Job";

25
26	}

27
28	public override void Execute(Guid contentDbId)

29	{
30

31	// get a reference to the current site collection's content database
32

33	SPWebApplication webApplication = this.Parent as SPWebApplication;
34

35	SPContentDatabase contentDb = webApplication.ContentDatabases[contentDbId];
36

37	// get a reference to the "ListTimerJob" list in the RootWeb of the first site collection in the content database
38

39	SPList Listjob = contentDb.Sites[0].RootWeb.Lists["ListTimerJob"];
40

41	// create a new list Item, set the Title to the current day/time, and update the item
42

43	SPListItem newList = Listjob.Items.Add();
44

45	newList["Title"] = DateTime.Now.ToString();
46

47	newList.Update();
48

49	}
50	}

51

}

As you can see this job just add a new item to a ListTimerJob list every time it’s executed

Now that you have the job built> Right click on the Features >Add Feature

Right click on the Feature1 ” you can rename the Feature1 to any name” > Add Event Receiver

As you can see the event Receiver class inherits from the Microsoft.SharePoint.SPFeatureReceiver and This class handles events raised during feature activation, deactivation, installation, uninstallation, and upgrade. But we only need FeatureActivated & FeatureDeactivated event handler to install/uninstall our custom timer job as following

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01	namespace DotnetFinder.Features.Feature1
02	{

03	[Guid("9a724fdb-e423-4232-9626-0cffc53fb74b")]
04	public class Feature1EventReceiver : SPFeatureReceiver

05	{
06	const string List_JOB_NAME = "ListLogger";

07	// Uncomment the method below to handle the event raised after a feature has been activated.
08

09	public override void FeatureActivated(SPFeatureReceiverProperties properties)
10	{

11	SPSite site = properties.Feature.Parent as SPSite;
12

13	// make sure the job isn't already registered
14

15	foreach (SPJobDefinition job in site.WebApplication.JobDefinitions)
16	{

17
18	if (job.Name == List_JOB_NAME)

19
20	job.Delete();

21
22	}

23
24	// install the job

25
26	ListTimerJob listLoggerJob = new ListTimerJob(List_JOB_NAME, site.WebApplication);

27
28	SPMinuteSchedule schedule = new SPMinuteSchedule();

29
30	schedule.BeginSecond = 0;

31
32	schedule.EndSecond = 59;

33
34	schedule.Interval = 5;

35
36	listLoggerJob.Schedule = schedule;

37
38	listLoggerJob.Update();

39
40	}

41
42	// Uncomment the method below to handle the event raised before a feature is deactivated.

43
44	public override void FeatureDeactivating(SPFeatureReceiverProperties properties)

45	{
46	SPSite site = properties.Feature.Parent as SPSite;

47
48	// delete the job

49
50	foreach (SPJobDefinition job in site.WebApplication.JobDefinitions)

51	{
52

53	if (job.Name == List_JOB_NAME)
54

55	job.Delete();
56

57	}
58

59	}
60

61

}

Before Deploying you should select the right scope of the Feature in other words in which scope you will activate the Feature(Farm,Site,Web,WebApplication) in our case we will activate Feature1 on Site which is mean Site Collection.

Note : if you trying to activate the feature in the wrong scope will get the following error

Now let us deploy our custom timer job >Right Click on Custom_TimerJob project > Click Deploy

Open now your SharePoint site and select ListTimerJob List and you should see something similar to the following image

Our custom timer job is working fine now you can go and check it and modify the schedule as following

Go to SharePoint 2010 central administration >Monitoring >in the Timer Jobs Section Select Review Job Definitions

and you should See our Custom Timer Job

Click on it and you should see Edit Timer Job Page ,Modify Timer Job schedule based on your requirement

Note : you can also modify schedule of your custom Timer Job from the code but you need to add one of the following class in FeatureActviated Event Handler as following

After Specific Minutes use SPMinuteSchedule class

Hourly use SPHourlySchedule class

Daily use SPDailySchedule class

Weekly use SPWeeklySchedule class

Monthly use SPMonthlySchedule class

Hope this helps...

How to read web.config from a timer job in Sharepoint

Reading web.config from a timer job::

I gotta say that I am pretty proud about this one. The scenario is that you have a timer job that connects to a database somewhere, and the connection string is stored in the web.config file. Now since your timer job doesnt run inside of IIS, it runs under the OWSTIMER executable, you can’t access it directly. The workaround is very, very easy though – 2 lines of code in fact!
The first thing you need is a reference to the SPWebApplication object. Once you have your SPWebApplication you can get your configuration file through the WebConfigurationmanager class. Here is an example of an execute method of a timer job that will get a setting for you:

   1: public override void Execute(Guid targetInstanceId)

   2: {

   3:     SPWebApplication webApplication = this.Parent as SPWebApplication;

   4:  

   5:     Configuration config = WebConfigurationManager.OpenWebConfiguration("/", webApplication.Name);

   6:     String myValue = config.AppSettings.Settings["mySettingName"].Value;

   7: }

So a couple of notes about the above code:

• You might be wondering what I use the settings property of the AppSettings property – the answer is that when I use AppSettings["mySettingName"] directly I was getting an error that it was not accessible due to its access level, but the Settings property works just as good
• This code assumes that you have not gone and renamed your SharePoint sites in IIS directly – the OpenWebConfiguration method uses a relative site URL within the IIS site, and the name of the site as it appears in IIS to load the configuration file. By default with SharePoint this will always match up the the SPWebApplication’s name property, but it is something to keep in mind

The above code should work for any SharePoint web application, so this means you can read the web.config files from each web application that use your timer job (perfect for what I needed as the connection string was unique per web app). The coolest part about this though is that it is only two lines of code! When I had a quick Google search around for this I didn’t find much, most people just recommended storing the connection strings in the registry or something like that, so this is a nice alternative