# Periodic Events

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/periodic-events/111424>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [August 7, 2007, 7:33am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/periodic-events/111424 "2007-08-07T07:33:02Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![dukael](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/c77e96/32.png) [@dukael](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/dukael)\
**Post date:** [August 7, 2007, 7:33am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/periodic-events/111424/1 "2007-08-07T07:33:02Z")

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Hi all,

Noob question, so please bear with me.

I want my rails app to periodically do some maintenance work (e.g.  
once a day). The maintenance commands can be called by an action under  
a maintenance controller.

A friend suggested using crontab, but I’m not sure how to use crontab  
to call an action in rails.

Thanks in advance!

– Andrew

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![dukael](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/c77e96/32.png) [@dukael](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/dukael)\
**Post date:** [August 7, 2007, 7:55am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/periodic-events/111424/2 "2007-08-07T07:55:04Z")

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On 8/6/07, Andrew F. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote:

> to call an action in rails.  
> Use a runner script which loads up the rails environment for you.  
> Create a class file and put it in the lib directory. Then you can  
> call class methods in the file by running:

ruby script/runner “Myclass.mymethod”

Chris