Quartz Scheduler and CRON/Schedule

The scheduler uses schedule (CRON) expressions to configure instances of CronTrigger.

Format

Schedule expressions are strings that comprise seven sub-strings, or fields, that describe the schedule's details. These sub-strings are separated with a white-space, and represent:

Field Position	Field Name	Mandatory?	Allowed Values	Allowed Special Characters
1	Seconds	Yes	0—59	/,—-
2	Minutes	Yes	0—59	/,—-
3	Hours	Yes	0—23	/,—-
4	Day-of-month	Yes	1—31	/,—? L W -
5	Month	Yes	1—12 or JAN—DEC	/,—-
6	Day-of-week	Yes	0—6 or SUN—SAT	/,—? L # -
7	Year	No	empty, 19702099	/, -

Special Characters

These are the special characters that are supported by the Quartz Scheduler implementation (taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cron).

Asterisk—An asterisk (*) indicates that the schedule (CRON) expression matches for all values of the field. For example, using an asterisk in the fifth field (the month field) indicates every month.

Slash—A slash (/) describes increments of ranges. For example, 3-59/15 in the second field (the minutes field) indicate the third minute of the hour and every 15 minutes thereafter. The form “*/…” is equivalent to the form “first-last/…”, that is, an increment over the largest possible range of the field.

Comma—A comma (,) is used to separate items of a list. For example, using “MON,WED,FRI” in the sixth field (the Day-of-week field) means Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

Hyphen—A hyphen (-) define ranges. For example, 2000-2010 indicates every year between 2000 and 2010 AD, inclusive.

L—‘L’ stands for last. When used in the Day-of-week field, it means the last day of the week (Sunday to Saturday means the seventh day or Saturday). If used in the Day-of-month field, it means the last day of the month. It is used to also specify constructs such as 'the last Friday' ('FRIL' or 6L) of a given month.

W—'W' stands for weekday. This character is allowed for the Day-of-month field and is used to specify the weekday (Monday-Friday) nearest the given day. For example:

If the 15th is a Saturday, the trigger fires on Friday the 14th.
If the 15th is a Sunday, the trigger fires on Monday the 16th.
If the 15th is a Tuesday, then it fires on Tuesday the 15th.

Hash—A hash (#) is allowed for the Day-of-week field and must be followed by a number between 1 and 5. It is used to specify constructs such as 'the second Friday' of a given month (6#2 or FRI#2).

Question mark—A question mark (?) specifies no specific value. It allows a either the Day-of-month or Day-of-week field to be left empty.

Examples

Expression	Schedule
0 0 12 * * ?	Fires at 12pm (noon) every day ‘?’ must be used in either Day-of-week or day-of-month.
0 15 10 ? * *	Fires at 10:15am every day.
0 15 10 * * ?	Fires at 10:15am every day.
0 15 10 * * ? *	Fires at 10:15am every day.
0 15 10 * * ? 2014	Fires at 10:15am every day during the year 2014.
0 * 14 * * ?	Fires every minute starting at 2pm and ending at 2:59pm, every day.
0 0/5 14 * * ?	Fires every 5 minutes starting at 2pm and ending at 2:55pm, every day.
0 0/5 14,18 * * ?	Fires every 5 minutes starting at 2pm and ending at 2:55pm, AND every 5 minutes starting at 6pm and ending at 6:55pm, every day.
0 0-5 14 * * ?	Fires every minute starting at 2pm and ending at 2:05pm, every day.
0 10,44 14 ? 3 WED	Fires at 2:10pm and at 2:44pm every Wednesday in the month of March.
0 15 10 ? * MON-FRI	Fires at 10:15am every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.
0 15 10 15 * ?	Fires at 10:15am on the 15th day of every month.
0 15 10 L * ?	Fires at 10:15am on the last day of every month.
0 15 10 L-2 * ?	Fires at 10:15am on the 2nd-to-last last day of every month.
0 15 10 ? * 6L	Fires at 10:15am on the last Friday of every month.
0 15 10 ? * 6L	Fires at 10:15am on the last Friday of every month.
0 15 10 ? * 6L 2002-2005	Fires at 10:15am on every last Friday of every month during the years 2002, 2003, 2004 and Fires 2005.
0 15 10 ? * 6#3	Fires at 10:15am on the third Friday of every month.
0 0 12 1/5 * ?	Fires at 12pm (noon) every 5 days every month, starting on the first day of the month.
0 11 11 11 11 ?	Fires every November 11th at 11:11am.