Run Quartz Scheduler Job with specific start, end date and within time constraints

Question

I am using Quartz-Scheduler for repetitive tasks but I am facing a trouble. In my server side my user wants to specify some date range like From 2013-09-27 with in 09:00 AM - 12:00 PM to 2013-09-30

Explanation:

Run a job from 2013-09-27 to 2013-09-30 but only between 09:00 AM - 12:00 PM

I am facing trouble in writing a Cron expression for it, furthermore my user is non-technical so my user wants me to create Cron expression automatically from both time stamp values.

Please help me out. Let me know if there is another way.

I have seen many resources on Google but I still can't find nothing.

Links:

http://quartz-scheduler.org/documentation/quartz-1.x/tutorials/crontrigger

http://quartz-scheduler.org/documentation/quartz-2.x/tutorials/tutorial-lesson-05

Does cron expression in unix/linux allow specifying exact start and end dates

Update

I have written one but it's not working

|------------------------------------------------------------------|
| Seconds | Minutes | Hours | DayOfMonth | Month | DayOfWeek | Year|
|         |         |       |            |       |           |     |
|   0     |    0    | 9-12  |   27-30    |   9   |     ?     | 2013|
|------------------------------------------------------------------|

trying to map 2013-09-27 to 2013-09-30 but only between 09:00 AM - 12:00 PM

Updated I have also tried it running with

Trigger trigger = TriggerBuilder.newTrigger().withIdentity(NAME_TRIGGER_TASK_UPDATER, GROUP_TASK_TRIGGER)
                    .withSchedule(CronScheduleBuilder.cronSchedule("0 0 9-12 19-22 10 ? *")).build();

but it doesn't give any error nor go into my execute method of my job

cronSchedule("0 0 9-12 ? * ?") throws invalid schedule exception.

The code below runs it without respecting the start and end date.

String startDateStr = "2013-09-27 00:00:00.0";
        String endDateStr = "2013-09-31 00:00:00.0";

        Date startDate = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss.S").parse(startDateStr);
        Date endDate = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss.S").parse(endDateStr);

        CronTrigger cronTrigger = newTrigger()
          .withIdentity("trigger1", "testJob")
          .startAt(startDate)
          .withSchedule(CronScheduleBuilder.cronSchedule("0 0 9-12 * * ?"))
          .endAt(endDate)
          .build();

Solution

What is the error you get when you say it is not working?

You can try the following code (Edit: applies to Quartz 2.2). This approach does not specify the start/end dates and year in the cron expression, instead uses the Trigger methods to specify them. (Note: I haven't tested it myself, let me know if it works for you)

Edit: I had the chance to test this code, I ran the code below and kept changing the system clock and all triggers were successful between 9 am to 12 am from start to end date.

public class CronJob {

    public static void main(String[] args) throws ParseException, SchedulerException {

        Scheduler scheduler = StdSchedulerFactory.getDefaultScheduler();

        JobDetail job = newJob(TestJob.class)
            .withIdentity("cronJob", "testJob") 
            .build();

        String startDateStr = "2013-09-27 00:00:00.0";
        String endDateStr = "2013-09-31 00:00:00.0";

        Date startDate = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss.S").parse(startDateStr);
        Date endDate = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss.S").parse(endDateStr);

        CronTrigger cronTrigger = newTrigger()
          .withIdentity("trigger1", "testJob")
          .startAt(startDate)
          .withSchedule(CronScheduleBuilder.cronSchedule("0 0 9-12 * * ?").withMisfireHandlingInstructionDoNothing())
          .endAt(endDate)
          .build();

        scheduler.scheduleJob(job, cronTrigger);
        scheduler.start();
    }    

    public static class TestJob implements Job {
        @Override
        public void execute(JobExecutionContext context) throws JobExecutionException {
            System.out.println("this is a cron scheduled test job");
        }        
    }
}

If the above code does not work, try to replace the cronSchedule("0 0 9-12 * * ?") with cronSchedule("0 0 9-12 ? * ?")