Scheduler

Learn how to automatically trigger Web Scraper API tasks and the basics of Cron expressions.

You can set up and manage your schedules through the Thordata dashboard, specifying when and how Web Scraper API will run automatically at specific times or intervals. Using Cron expressions, you can flexibly set the frequency of task executions.

Note: In most cases, the scheduled task will trigger within one second of the scheduled time, but due to system or server reasons, there may be slight delays.

Setting Up a New Scheduled Task

Access the Timer: First, go to the “Timer” page and click the [Create Scheduled Task] button in the top-left corner to enter the task configuration page.

Configure the Scheduled Task:

• Scheduled Task Name: You can customize the task name to make it easier for you to manage.

• Scheduled Settings: The scheduling tool uses Cron expressions to specify execution times. If you're familiar with Cron expressions, you can start using it directly. If not, don’t worry. The tool provides a visual, customizable builder page with options to set schedules by minute, hour, day, week, or month. While it doesn’t have the full power of Cron expressions, it still lets you easily customize your schedule.

• Choose Scraping API: Select the target scraping API and configure the content you want to scrape.

• Finally, click [Confirm] to finish.

Cron: The standard Cron expression (5 fields) is used to specify the execution time of a task. The format is: minute hour day month weekday, with five fields in total.

Parameters:

Field	Name	Value Range	Definition
1	Minute	0-59	The minute of the hour
2	Hour	0-23	The hour of the day
3	Day	1-31 or ?	The day of the month
4	Month	1-12	The month of the year
5	Weekday	0-7 (0 and 7 represent Sunday) or ?	The day of the week

Example: 0 8 * * 1-5 This means the scraping task will run every weekday (Monday to Friday) at exactly 8:00 AM.