Scraping is a slow task, usually run by multiple machines. These commands add messages to a queue, with specific data on what to scrape. Workers then listen to the queue and start scraping. Just add more workers to get the job done more quickly.
Just add configuration for a Message Queueing service, for example ironMQ. Trigger artisan commands using cron to fill the queue. Other artisan commands like queue:worker
or queue:listen
can then read messages and perform long running scraping tasks. These listening/long polling processes should be supervised by eg: supervisor.
Use a message queue. Laravel supports IronMQ, Amazon SQS and beanstalkd. Configure it in app/config/production/queue.php
. This harvester uses MongoDB as system of record (SOR). Configure it in app/config/production/database.php
. No need to change the default
value in that config array. At the bottom, do configure redis, because we are using Redis both; to control which jobs are already on the queue, and to save statistics about the harvester. Since you have Redis configured, feel free to use it for caching as well. See app/config/cache.php
for more information.
add cron job for daily run to /etc/crontab
:
#m h dom mon dow user command
* 3 * * * ubuntu cd /path/to/application && php artisan harvest:daily
also add cron job for consecutive runs:
#m h dom mon dow user command
*/5 * * * * ubuntu cd /path/to/application && php artisan harvest:delays
If needed, one can run a manual command to pull specific data
php artisan harvest:manual type id date
The last 3 parameters are required. Type can be one of "trip" or "stop". The ID is numeric, and date is formatted Ymd
.
Workers are started with
php artisan queue:listen
Optionally, add --timeout=