Spring Cloud Task utilizes a datasource for storing the results of task executions. By default, we provide an in memory instance of H2 to provide a simple method of bootstrapping development. However, in a production environment, you’ll want to configure your own DataSource.

If your application utilizes only a single DataSource and that will serve as both your business schema as well as the task repository, all you need to do is provide any DataSource (via Spring Boot’s configuration conventions is the easiest way). This will be automatically used by Spring Cloud Task for the repository.

If your application utilizes more than one DataSource, you’ll need to configure the task repository with the appropriate DataSource. This customization can be done via an implementation of the TaskConfigurer.

In some cases a user wants to allow for the time difference between when a task is requested and when the infrastructure actually launches it. Spring Cloud Task allows a user to create a TaskExecution at the time the task is requested. Then pass the execution ID of the generated TaskExecution to the task so that it can update the TaskExecution through the task’s lifecycle.

The TaskExecution can be created by calling the createTaskExecution method on an implementation of the TaskRepository that references the datastore storing the TaskExecutions.

In order to configure your Task to use a generated TaskExecutionId add the following property:

 spring.cloud.task.executionid=<yourtaskId>

Spring Cloud Task allows a user to store an external task Id for each TaskExecution. An example of this would be a task id that is provided by Cloud Foundry when a task is launched on the platform. In order to configure your Task to use a generated TaskExecutionId add the following property:

spring.cloud.task.external-execution-id=<externalTaskId>

	Note
	Spring Boot properties are used for configuration so the relaxed binding Boot offers is available for configuration here as well.

The TaskConfigurer is a strategy interface allowing for users to customize the way components of Spring Cloud Task are configured. By default, we provide the DefaultTaskConfigurer that provides logical defaults (Map based in memory components useful for development if no DataSource is provided and JDBC based components if there is a DataSource available.

The TaskConfigurer allows the configuration of three main components:

In most cases, the name of the task will be the application name as configured via Spring Boot. However, there are some cases, where you may want to map the run of a task to a different name. Spring Data Flow is an example of this (where you want the task to be run with the name of the task definition). Because of this, we offer the ability to customize how the task is named via the TaskNameResolver interface.

By default, Spring Cloud Task provides the SimpleTaskNameResolver which will use the following options (in order of precedence):

Allows a user to register listeners for specific events that occur during the task lifecycle. This is done by creating a class that implements the TaskExecutionListener interface. The class that implements the TaskExecutionListener interface will be notified for the following events:

Spring Cloud Task also allows a user add TaskExecution Listeners to methods within a bean by using the following method annotations:

 public class MyBean {

	@BeforeTask
	public void methodA(TaskExecution taskExecution) {
	}

	@AfterTask
	public void methodB(TaskExecution taskExecution) {
	}

	@FailedTask
	public void methodC(TaskExecution taskExecution, Throwable throwable) {
	}
}