How to start an EJB Timer on deployment?

Question

I need to create an interval Timer that is set to run once a week automatically. I don't want it to start based on user input, but I want it to be created when the application is deployed to the server. Every example that I have seen has another class starting the timer. I don't want to use a message driven bean to create the timer because the audit should just query a database for a given time period and is not based off of actions which send messages.

I have included an example of a Timer. In the example below, the timer should fire every 10 minutes. As a test I want the timer to fire every 10 minutes so I can test the timer.

@Stateless
public class TimerTest implements
        TimerTestLocal, TimerTestRemote{

    @Resource 
    private TimerService timerService;
    private Logger log = Logger.getLogger(TimerTest.class);
    private long interval = 1000 * 60 * 10;
    private static String TIMER_NAME = "AuditTimer";

    public void scheduleTimer() throws NamingException {
        // TODO Auto-generated method stub
        Calendar cal = Calendar.getInstance();
        //cal.set(Calendar.HOUR_OF_DAY, 23);//run at 11pm
        //cal.set(Calendar.MINUTE, 00);
        //cal.set(Calendar.DAY_OF_WEEK, Calendar.FRIDAY);
        SimpleDateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat("MM/dd/yyyy hh:mm");
        log.debug("schedule for: " + sdf.format(cal.getTime()));

        timerService.createTimer(cal.getTime(), interval, TIMER_NAME);
    }

    public void cancelTimer() {
        for(Object obj : timerService.getTimers())
        {
            Timer timer = (Timer)obj;
            if(timer.getInfo().equals(TIMER_NAME))
                timer.cancel();
        }
    }

    @Timeout
    public void timerEvent(Timer timer) {
        log.debug("timer fired");
    }


}

So is there any way that I can start this timer when the application is deployed? I don't think it's a good idea to put the creation of the Timer in a @PostConstruct method because of class loaders on in the server.

Answer 1

If your project can use jee6 / ejb3.1 there is a much better solution to this problem. http://docs.oracle.com/javaee/6/tutorial/doc/bnboy.html

@javax.ejb.Schedule(minute="*/10", hour="*")
public void automaticTimeout() {
    logger.info("Automatic timeout occured");
}

By using the new @Schedule annotation you have extensive control about when and how often a timeout method will be called. The big upside: you no longer have to start the timer "from outside".

Oracle writes:

Automatic timers are created by the EJB container when an enterprise bean that contains methods annotated with the @Schedule or @Schedules annotations is deployed. An enterprise bean can have multiple automatic timeout methods, unlike a programmatic timer, which allows only one method annotated with the @Timeout annotation in the enterprise bean class.