Simple Testing of WP-Cron

In this tutorial we will be creating a plugin that runs a task every 5 seconds and displays a message. In order to test this we will load the wp-cron.php file directly in our browser and output data to the display, otherwise we would have to perform some other action, maybe in the database, as the output is typically not shown on the site. So let’s run through the initial steps to get this setup quickly.

Create the plugin file #Create the plugin file

In the wp-content/plugins folder create the folder ‘my-wp-cron-test’ and the file ‘my-wp-cron-test.php’. Obviously you can name it whatever you would like. This name is simply descriptive of our intended use.

Open the PHP file for editing and insert the following lines

<?php
/*
Plugin Name: My WP-Cron Test
*/

This text will setup the plugin for display and activation in your wp-admin Plugins menu. Be sure to enable the plugin.

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Testing the code #Testing the code

Open your browser and point it to YOUR_SITE_URL/wp-cron.php

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View all currently scheduled tasks #View all currently scheduled tasks

WordPress has an undocumented function, _get_cron_array, that returns an array of all currently scheduled tasks. We are going to use a crude but effective method to dump out all the tasks using var_dump. For ease of use place the following code in the plugin:

echo '<pre>'; print_r( _get_cron_array() ); echo '</pre>';

Into an easy to call function like:

function bl_print_tasks() {
	echo '<pre>'; print_r( _get_cron_array() ); echo '</pre>';
}