scheduling a task twice a day with Laravel

Question

I'm trying to schedule a command twice a day:

Here is my code:

protected function schedule(Schedule $schedule)
    {

        $morningCarbonHour = Carbon::now();
        $morningCarbonHour->hour = 23;
        $morningCarbonHour->minute = 27;
        $morningCarbonHour->second = 00;

        $hourIni = $morningCarbonHour->format('H:i');

        $nightCarbonHour = Carbon::now();
        $nightCarbonHour->hour = 23;
        $nightCarbonHour->minute = 28;
        $nightCarbonHour->second = 00;

        $hourFin = $nightCarbonHour->format('H:i');

        $schedule->command('check:time')
                 ->twiceDaily($hourIni,$hourFin)
                 ->timezone('America/Mexico_City');
    }

I get this error message:

[2016-05-31 23:29:01] production.ERROR: exception 'InvalidArgumentException' with message 'Invalid CRON field value 23:27,23:28 at position 1' in /home/forge/myproject/vendor/mtdowling/cron-expression/src/Cron/CronExpression.php:147

Stack trace:

I don't really know why??? Any Idea???

Answer 1

twiceDaily accepts parameters as hours.
Default values is public function twiceDaily($first = 1, $second = 13) which means task will be execute daily at 1:00 & 13:00.

You are trying to run task 23:27 and 23:28 which is technically not available using this (twiceDaily) method, because it does not accepts minutes as parameter.

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Solution

Change twiceDaily() to <command>->cron('27,28 23 * * *');.
It will run Your command at 23:27 and 23:28.

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Or if You want to run command two times a day, with a different hour and minutes, You should use two separated commands with dailyAt() (two dailyAt() on one command, will override and will not work as You want).