Umbraco 9 Configuring Hangfire Scheduled Tasks

What is Hangfire and why I recommend it?

Hangfire is great for scheduled tasks. I have used Hangfire all the way back to Umbraco 7 and plan on continuing to use it for Umbraco 9.

You do not have to use Hangfire for scheduled tasks in Umbraco 9 and I have written a related blog article called ‘Scheduled or Recurring Tasks in Umbraco 9’ which explains how to get u and running without using Hangfire.

With that said though, I do recommend Hangfire. It simply works great, is easy to configurable and a lot more powerful than the ‘out of the box’ .Net Core RecurringHostedServices. Another good reason to use Hangfire is that it has a dashboard where you can monitor your scheduled tasks and even manually trigger them. In addition to this you can also embed the Hangfire dashboard within the Umbraco backend which is a great bonus.

Installing Hangfire on Umbraco 9

The only negative about Hangfire is there is quite a few steps to initially getting up and running and there are no quick plug and play packages to do this. With that said though, this article should guide you through the process quite easily.

Carefully follow the steps below to get up and running within 30 minutes.

Step 1 - Installing Hangfire Nuget Packages

Install all the following Nuget packages.

Step 2 - Add your scheduled tasks and inject them in your application

Create a class to store your scheduled tasks. This can be pretty much the same as when your create a custom helper or service. If you need help with this then I wrote a related article called 'How to compose a custom service in Umbraco 9' which will explain how to create a custom service and inject it into your application.

There are a number of ways to inject custom services into your application and this article requires you to have a good understanding of that. You will find another article I wrote called 'Different Ways to Inject Events, Helpers and Services into Umbraco 9' useful.

*Before progressing any further I recommend reading through both related articles.

Here is an example a very basic task which I will schedule with Hangfire further down in the article.

using Microsoft.Extensions.Logging;
using System;
using System.Threading.Tasks;

namespace Website.Core.Events
{
     public interface IHangfireTasks
     {
          Task<bool> TestScheduledTask();
     }

     public class HangfireTasks : IHangfireTasks
     {
          private readonly ILogger<HangfireTasks> _logger;

          public HangfireTasks(ILogger<HangfireTasks> logger)
          {
               _logger = logger;
          }

          public async Task<bool> TestScheduledTask()
          {
               try
               {
                    _logger.LogInformation("TestScheduledTask - Started");

                    //some code to go here
                    //await ......

                    _logger.LogInformation("TestScheduledTask - Finished");

                    return true;
               }
               catch (Exception e)
               {
                    _logger.LogError(e, "Index | Exception: {0} | Message: {1} | Stack Trace: {2}", e.InnerException != null ? e.InnerException.ToString() : "", e.Message != null ? e.Message.ToString() : "", e.StackTrace);
               }

               return false;
          }
     }
}

 

Here is an example of how I injected this into my application

Please note my preference on this is to create a extension method. If you read the two related articles above then you would have found details information on this in the 'Creating an extension method for IUmbracoBuilder and injecting a collection into startup.cs' section.

using Microsoft.Extensions.DependencyInjection;
using Umbraco.Cms.Core.DependencyInjection;
using Umbraco.Cms.Core.Notifications;

namespace Website.Core.Events
{
     public static class EventExtensions
     {
          public static IUmbracoBuilder AddEvents(this IUmbracoBuilder builder)
          {
               builder
               .AddNotificationHandler<ContentPublishingNotification, PublishingEvent>()
               .AddNotificationHandler<ContentPublishedNotification, PublishedEvent>()
               .AddNotificationHandler<ContentMovedToRecycleBinNotification, ContentMovedToRecycleBinEvent>();

               builder.Services
               .AddHostedService<ScheduledTasks>();

               builder.Services
               .AddScoped<IHangfireTasks, HangfireTasks>();

               return builder;
          }
     }
}

Please note the area of the code which is of most relevance to this article is 

 builder.Services.AddScoped<IHangfireTasks, HangfireTasks>();

Step 3 - Adding some Hangfire config to the startup.cs / ConfigureServices Method

Take a look at my ConfigureServices method configuration. You will notice there is some Hangfire configuration inside the region I created. This is what you will need to add into your project.

public void ConfigureServices(IServiceCollection services)
{
     #pragma warning disable IDE0022 // Use expression body for methods

     services.AddUmbraco(_env, _config)
     .AddBackOffice()
     .AddWebsite()
     .AddComposers()
     .AddServices()
     .AddEvents()
      .Build();

     #region Configure Hangfire

     services.AddHangfire(c => c.UseSqlServerStorage(_config.GetConnectionString("umbracoDbDSN")));
     GlobalConfiguration.Configuration.UseSqlServerStorage(_config.GetConnectionString("umbracoDbDSN")).WithJobExpirationTimeout(TimeSpan.FromDays(7));

     #endregion

     #pragma warning restore IDE0022 // Use expression body for methods
}

Step 4 - Add some Hangfire config to the startup.cs / Configure Method

Take note of a few things in this code...

1. Noticed the services I have injected.

IBackgroundJobClient backgroundJobClient,
IRecurringJobManager recurringJobManager,
IHangfireTasks hangfireTasks

2. Noticed the code I have added in the 'Configure Hangfire region'.

3. Noticed the various different ways of triggering tasks I have commented out

public void Configure(IApplicationBuilder app, IWebHostEnvironment env, IBackgroundJobClient backgroundJobClient, IRecurringJobManager recurringJobManager, IHangfireTasks hangfireTasks)
{
     if (env.IsDevelopment())
     {
          app.UseDeveloperExceptionPage();
     }

     app.UseUmbraco()
          .WithMiddleware(u =>
          {
               u.WithBackOffice();
               u.WithWebsite();
          })
          .WithEndpoints(u =>
          {
               u.UseInstallerEndpoints();
               u.UseBackOfficeEndpoints();
               u.UseWebsiteEndpoints();
          });

     #region Configure Hangfire

     app.UseHangfireServer();

     //No Authentication
     app.UseHangfireDashboard("/hangfire", new DashboardOptions()
     {
          AppPath = null,
          DashboardTitle = "Hangfire Dashboard"
     });

     // Recurring Job for every 1 min 
     recurringJobManager.AddOrUpdate("TestScheduledTask : Runs Every 1 Min", () => hangfireTasks.TestScheduledTask(), Cron.Minutely);

     //Fire and forget job 
     //var jobId = backgroundJobClient.Enqueue(() => hangfireTasks.TestScheduledTask());

     //var jobId = backgroundJobClient.Enqueue(() => HangfireTasks.TestJob());
     //backgroundJobClient.Schedule(() => hangfireTasks.TestScheduledTask(), TimeSpan.FromDays(5));

     //Continous Job 
     //backgroundJobClient.ContinueJobWith(jobId, () => hangfireTasks.TestScheduledTask());

     //Schedule Job / Delayed Job 
     //backgroundJobClient.Schedule(() => hangfireTasks.TestScheduledTask(), TimeSpan.FromDays(5));

     #endregion
}

Step 5 - Run the project and test your scheduled task

That should be it. Run your project and do some testing. If everything is as expected you will notice some new database tables get added to your database.

That, and the scheduled task should also fire.

If you are having problems and this still isn't working I am pretty sure if you go back through the article step by step everything should be there to get you up and running.

Failing that please feel free to get in contact and I am happy to help out. You can either find me on LinkedIn or drop a comment below.

Extras - Hangfire Dashboard

Enabling the Hangfire Dashboard in Umbraco 9

To enable the Hangfire Dashboard in Umbraco 9 you simply need to add an extra configuration value to the appsettings.json file. In the global section simply add a reserved path the same as below.

"Global": {
    "ReservedPaths": "~/hangfire",
    "Id": "cf1744bf-0998-413d-8a97-7a704604e692"
}

Thats it! Now if you visit the '~/hangfire' you will see the dashboard.

Securing the Hangfire Dashboard in Umbraco 9

To secure the hangfire hasboard with a username and password you need to do two things.

1. The first is add an extra configuration section to the appsettings.json file.

"HangfireCredentials": {
     "UserName": "admin",
     "Password": "admin@123"
},

2. The second thing is to swop out some code in the Startup.cs file

Replace this...

//No Authentication
app.UseHangfireDashboard("/hangfire", new DashboardOptions()
{
     AppPath = null,
     DashboardTitle = "Hangfire Dashboard"
});

With this...

//Basic Authentication added to access the Hangfire Dashboard
app.UseHangfireDashboard("/hangfire", new DashboardOptions()
{
     AppPath = null,
     DashboardTitle = "Hangfire Dashboard",
     Authorization = new[]{
     new HangfireCustomBasicAuthenticationFilter{
          User = _config.GetSection("HangfireCredentials:UserName").Value,
          Pass = _config.GetSection("HangfireCredentials:Password").Value
}
},
     //Authorization = new[] { new DashboardNoAuthorizationFilter() }, 
     //IgnoreAntiforgeryToken = true 
});

If you re-build you project, run, and test the '~/hangfire' url again you will notice it now requires the username and password you stored in the appsettings.config file.

Things I wanted to get working but didn't quite figure out.

When I used Hangfire in the past for Umbraco 7 & 8 I managed to figure out how to authorize based on the Umbraco memer. So if you were logged into the backend the '~/hangfire' working and if you were logged out it didn't

I tried to get this working for Umbraco 9 and made some good progress but just couldn't get this to work. I think I will revisit this in the future when there is more documentation available for Umbraco 9.

With that said though, If anyone has any ideas please comment below and I will give this another go.

Here is what I got so far.

I added this code to the ConfigureServices method in the Startup.cs file.

services.Configure<AuthorizationOptions>(options => {
     options.AddPolicy("umbracoUserAuthorizedPolicy", policy => {
          policy.RequireAuthenticatedUser();
          //policy.RequireClaim(ClaimTypes.Role, "admin");
     });
});

I then replaced the authorization code in the Configure method in the Startup.cs file.

//Umbraco User Authentication
app.UseHangfireDashboard(
     pathMatch: "/hangfire",
     options: new DashboardOptions()
     {
           Authorization = new IDashboardAuthorizationFilter[] {
           new HangfireAuthorizationFilter("umbracoUserAuthorizedPolicy")
      }
});

I then created a DashboardAuthorizationFilter

using Hangfire.Annotations;
using Hangfire.Dashboard;
using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Authorization;
using Microsoft.Extensions.DependencyInjection;

namespace Website.Core.Utils
{
     public class HangfireAuthorizationFilter : IDashboardAuthorizationFilter
     {
          private string policyName;

          public HangfireAuthorizationFilter(string policyName)
          {
               this.policyName = policyName;
          }

          public bool Authorize([NotNull] DashboardContext context)
          { 
               var httpContext = context.GetHttpContext();
               var authService = httpContext.RequestServices.GetRequiredService<IAuthorizationService>();
               bool success = authService.AuthorizeAsync(httpContext.User,        this.policyName).ConfigureAwait(false).GetAwaiter().GetResult().Succeeded;
               return success;
          }
     }
}

The problems I encountered is I just could not get the user in the context to check to see if they are logged in.

Installing Hangfire Dashboard In Umbraco 9 Custom Section

I wrote a follow up article called 'Creating my First Package in Umbraco 9 (Hangfire Dashboard)'. Here I have also uploaded a Hangfire Dashboard for Umbraco 9.