Simulating background task on AppHarbor

Question

I'm using System.Runtime.Caching.MemoryCache to simulate a repeated task on a running .NET MVC application deployed on AppHarbor.

Entries in the cache are added using a CacheItemPolicy which contains an AbsoluteExpiration offset and a RemovedCallback that calls a method and retriggers the adding of the item in the cache (as described here)

MemoryCache is populated first time in Application_Start. It works fine locally, but doesn't seem to work once deployed on AppHarbor (tried also with HttpRuntime.Cache, same result).

My application is running under a CANOE (free) account on AppHarbor that only has one worker. Does this mean that I won't be able to simulate the background task until I upgrade to some paid plan?

Thanks!

Answer 1

I don't think upgrading will help, they are working on adding background jobs to AppHarbor but to my knowledge they available yet.

What about using a service like https://stillalive.com/ to periodically hit a page on your site that then spins up a new thread and starts running your background task? Its available as a free add-on.

I was thinking of doing something like this while waiting for the background task functionality to be available.

Answer 2

Your application has to have visitors every once in a while for this to work. Other than StillAlive, Pingdom is also a good bet for generating requests to your app. You should also take a look at MomentApp. We expect to have background tasks ready shortly.