WebJobs in Microsoft Azure is considered to be a feature of
Azure App Service. It lets you run a program or script in the same context as a
web app, API app or mobile app. Azure WebJobs is a feature provided by the
cloud computing platform of Microsoft which enables you to run programs/scripts
as background processes by a part of Azure websites. You can upload and run an
executable file such as as cmd, bat, exe (.NET), ps1, sh, php, py, js and jar.
These programs run as WebJobs on a schedule (cron) or continuously.
Here are some
typical scenarios that would be great for the Windows Azure WebJobs SDK:
ü
Image processing or other CPU-intensive work.
ü
Queue processing.
ü
RSS aggregation.
ü
File maintenance, such as aggregating or
cleaning up log files.
ü
Other long-running tasks that you want to run in
a background thread, such as sending emails.
WebJobs are
invoked in two different ways, either they are triggered or they are
continuously running. Triggered jobs happen on a schedule or when some event
happens and Continuous jobs basically run a while loop.
WebJobs are
deployed by copying them to the right place in the file-system (or using a
designated API which will do the same).
The following file types are accepted
as runnable scripts that can be used as a job:
ü
.exe -
.NET assemblies compiled with the WebJobs SDK
ü
.cmd, .bat, .exe (using windows cmd)
ü
.sh (using bash)
ü
.php (using php)
ü
.py (using python)
ü
.js (using node)
After you
deploy your WebJobs from the portal, you can start and stop jobs, delete them,
upload jobs as ZIP files, etc. You've got full control.
A good thing to
point out, though, is that Azure WebJobs are more than just scheduled
scripts, you can also create WebJobs as
.NET projects written in C# or whatever.
WebJobs
best work with Azure Queues, Blobs, Tables and Service Bus. WebJobs SDK has built in API to listen for the incoming data into these storage systems, hence the Job will be triggered when there is a new data and process it accordingly.
