Time-based schedules for jobs and crawlers - AWS Glue
Cron expressions

Time-based schedules for jobs and crawlers

You can define a time-based schedule for your crawlers and jobs in AWS Glue. The definition of these schedules uses the Unix-like cron syntax. You specify time in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), and the minimum precision for a schedule is 5 minutes.

To learn more about configuring jobs and crawlers to run using a schedule, see Starting jobs and crawlers using triggers.

Cron expressions

Cron expressions have six required fields, which are separated by white space.

Syntax

cron(Minutes Hours Day-of-month Month Day-of-week Year)
Fields Values Wildcards

Minutes

0–59

, - * /

Hours

0–23

, - * /

Day-of-month

1–31

, - * ? / L W

Month

1–12 or JAN-DEC

, - * /

Day-of-week

1–7 or SUN-SAT

, - * ? / L

Year

1970–2199

, - * /
Wildcards

  • The , (comma) wildcard includes additional values. In the Month field, JAN,FEB,MAR would include January, February, and March.

  • The - (dash) wildcard specifies ranges. In the Day field, 1–15 would include days 1 through 15 of the specified month.

  • The * (asterisk) wildcard includes all values in the field. In the Hours field, * would include every hour.

  • The / (forward slash) wildcard specifies increments. In the Minutes field, you could enter 1/10 to specify every 10th minute, starting from the first minute of the hour (for example, the 11th, 21st, and 31st minute).

  • The ? (question mark) wildcard specifies one or another. In the Day-of-month field you could enter 7, and if you didn't care what day of the week the seventh was, you could enter ? in the Day-of-week field.

  • The L wildcard in the Day-of-month or Day-of-week fields specifies the last day of the month or week.

  • The W wildcard in the Day-of-month field specifies a weekday. In the Day-of-month field, 3W specifies the day closest to the third weekday of the month.

Limits

  • You can't specify the Day-of-month and Day-of-week fields in the same cron expression. If you specify a value in one of the fields, you must use a ? (question mark) in the other.

  • Cron expressions that lead to rates faster than 5 minutes are not supported.

Examples

When creating a schedule, you can use the following sample cron strings.

Minutes Hours Day of month Month Day of week Year Meaning

0

10

*

*

?

*

Run at 10:00 am (UTC) every day

15

12

*

*

?

*

Run at 12:15 pm (UTC) every day

0

18

?

*

MON-FRI

*

Run at 6:00 pm (UTC) every Monday through Friday

0

8

1

*

?

*

Run at 8:00 am (UTC) every first day of the month

0/15

*

*

*

?

*

Run every 15 minutes

0/10

*

?

*

MON-FRI

*

Run every 10 minutes Monday through Friday

0/5

8–17

?

*

MON-FRI

*

Run every 5 minutes Monday through Friday between 8:00 am and 5:55 pm (UTC)

For example to run on a schedule of every day at 12:15 UTC, specify:


cron(15 12 * * ? *)