How Gocron Simplifies Go‑Based Task Scheduling with a Web UI

Overview

Gocron is an open‑source scheduling system written in Go. It provides a centralized web‑based scheduler that can replace Linux crontab, supporting second‑level cron expressions.

Key Features

Web UI for creating, editing, deleting and monitoring tasks.

Cron‑style expressions with second precision.

Automatic retry on failure and configurable timeout with forced termination.

Task dependency configuration (A must finish before B starts).

Role‑based permission control.

Two task types:

Shell command execution on one or more task nodes.

HTTP request execution directly by the scheduler.

Execution logs viewable in the UI.

Result notifications via email, Slack or generic webhook.

Architecture

Each scheduled job runs on a “task node”. A task node is a lightweight Go service that listens on port 5921. The scheduler communicates with nodes via HTTP to dispatch shell commands.

Installation

Download the binary or build from source, then start the scheduler and one or more task nodes. The UI is served on the scheduler’s HTTP port (default 8080). Example commands:

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/ouqiang/gocron.git
cd gocron

# Build the scheduler
go build -o gocron cmd/gocron/main.go

# Start the scheduler
./gocron -port 8080

# Start a task node
./gocron-node -port 5921

Adding a Task Node

In the UI, navigate to “Task Nodes” and add a new node specifying the server address and port 5921. The node must be reachable from the scheduler.

Creating a Task

When a main task has multiple subtasks, list them as SubTask1; SubTask2; in the “Subtasks” field.

The scheduler executes subtasks in reverse order, i.e. MainTask → SubTask2 → SubTask1. This behavior allows a parent task to wait for all children to finish.

Task Logs

Execution logs for each run are displayed in the UI and can be filtered by task, status or time range.

Repository

Project source code: https://github.com/ouqiang/gocron