How to get rufus-scheduler working with a Rails app deployed to Heroku?

Question

In ./config/initializers I've created a file called task_scheduler.rb and it contains the following code:

require 'rufus-scheduler'
require 'mechanize'

scheduler = Rufus::Scheduler.new

scheduler.every("1h") do
    puts "Starting Rufus Scheduler - Task 1 - Checking exampleShop for new orders"

    a = Mechanize.new

    a.get('http://exampleshop.nl/admin/') do |page|

        # Select the login form
        login_form = page.forms.first

        # Insert the username and password
        login_form.username = 'username'
        login_form.password = 'password'

        # Submit the login information
        dashboard_page = a.submit(login_form, login_form.buttons.first)

        # Check if the login was successfull
        puts check_1 = dashboard_page.title == 'Dashboard' ?  "CHECK 1 DASHBOARD SUCCESS" : "CHECK 1 DASHBOARD FAIL"

        # Visit the orders index page to scrape some standard information
        orders_page = a.click(dashboard_page.link_with(:text => /Bestellingen/))

        # pp orders_page # => http://pastebin.com/L3zASer6

        # Check if the visit is successful
        puts check_2 = orders_page.title == 'Bestellingen' ?  "CHECK 2 ORDERS SUCCESS" : "CHECK 2 ORDERS FAIL"

        # Search for all #singleOrder table row's and put them in variable all_single_orders
        all_single_orders = orders_page.search("#singleOrder") 

        # Scrape the needed information (the actual save to database is omitted)
        all_single_orders.each do |order|
            # Set links for each order
            order_link = order.at_css("a")['href']  #Assuming first link in row

            @order_id = order.search("#orderId").text                   
            @order_status = order.search("#orderStatus").text       
            @order_revenue = order.search("#orderAmount").text      

            # Visit a single order page to fetch more detailed information
            single_order_page = orders_page.link_with(:href => order_link).click

            @first_name = single_order_page.search(".firstName").text
            @last_name = single_order_page.search(".lastName").text
            @city = single_order_page.search(".city").text
            @postal_code = single_order_page.search(".postalCode").text
            @address = single_order_page.search(".address").text
            @email = single_order_page.search(".email").text
            @order_quantity = single_order_page.search(".orderQuantity").text

            order = Order.create(   order_id: @order_id, first_name: @first_name, last_name: @last_name, city: @city,
                                                        email: @email, postal_code: @postal_code, address: @address, order_quantity: @order_quantity,
                                                        order_revenue: @order_revenue, order_status: @order_status)
        end
    end

    puts "Ending Rufus Scheduler - Task 1 - Checking exampleShop for new orders"
end

The rufus-scheduler works when testing in an development environment. But it stops working when I deploy the app to Heroku (free).

I'm using Phusion Passenger 4.0.27 as the application server.

My Gemfile looks like this:

source 'https://rubygems.org'
ruby '2.0.0'
gem 'rails', '4.0.1'
gem 'rufus-scheduler', '3.0.2'
gem 'pg'
gem 'mechanize'
gem 'bcrypt-ruby', '3.1.2'
gem 'sass-rails', '~> 4.0.0'
gem 'uglifier', '>= 1.3.0'
gem 'coffee-rails', '~> 4.0.0'
gem 'jquery-rails'
gem 'turbolinks'
gem 'jbuilder', '~> 1.2'
gem 'newrelic_rpm'

group :doc do
  gem 'sdoc', require: false
end

group :development do
    gem 'sqlite3'
end

group :production do
    gem 'rails_12factor'
    gem 'passenger'
    gem 'pg'
end

The Procfile required by Phusion Passenger contains the following:

web: bundle exec passenger start -p $PORT --max-pool-size 3

I have no workers running. I'm using one free standard web Dyno.

Any idea why rufus-scheduler is not working while deployed to Heroku?

UPDATE

I know I could create a customer .rake file and use the free Heroku Scheduler add-on to execute the task. But I'm wondering if there's a way to get the rufus-scheduler and free heroku dyno combination to work.

Answer 1

Here's an example of how to get it to work on Rails:

#
# config/initializers/scheduler.rb
require 'rufus-scheduler'

# Let's use the rufus-scheduler singleton
#
s = Rufus::Scheduler.singleton

# Awesome recurrent task...
#
s.every '1m' do
  Rails.logger.info "hello, it's #{Time.now}"
end

Take a look at the documentation.

Answer 2

You could instead use Heroku's Scheduler and move this task to work with Heroku's native tools : https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/scheduler

Answer 3

I solved this problem just adding to my Procfile:

web: bundle exec passenger start -p $PORT --max-pool-size 3 --min-instances 2