Starting custom timer job programmatically

Okay Tech Days 2009 Finland is over and I managed to get a few good tips and tricks. I must thank Juhani Lith (Microsoft) for providing some information regarding the question about where to place code in SharePoint 2007 that takes a lot server resources temporarily. Currently the best choice is to put that code into Custom Timer Job. SharePoint Timer Jobs are excellent into this kind of function since I do not need to write own code for a service to do this asynchronously. This solution needs of course some serious testing and as Juhani mentioned, it might cause other timer jobs to fail or work poorly when this other code runs. And a side note: when I was sitting in the train headed to Tech Days 2009 (journey started at 3 a.m. I actually wrote beginning code for this Timer Job without knowing was this right or not. There is also another good place for this code and it is Workflow (w3wp.exe). We’ll see which one is the better way…

And now for the stuff that topic is all about: Starting custom timer job programmatically (or by code, all about right words). Let’s start from the point where you have done a Custom Timer Job (there’s now plenty of stuff from this topic). And now you want to start it programmatically, on demand. This topic is not so much talked about but after a trial and error I found a way to do this from code.

The code:
Web Part side (like a button event or so, where you want to start the Timer Job):
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SPSite site = SPContext.Current.Site;

string timerJobName = "HBExportJob";

CustomTimerJob myCustomTimerJob= new CustomTimerJob (timerJobName, site.WebApplication);

SPOneTimeSchedule schedule = new SPOneTimeSchedule(DateTime.Now);

myCustomTimerJob.Schedule = schedule;

myCustomTimerJob.Update();
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CustomTimerJob is a class that is inheritated from SPJobDefinition.
That code kicks the timer job running programmatically. I began this process by creating a custom timer job and then I looked about the common installer classes from examples that are in the Internet. Then it hit like a ligthning from a clear sky, you can bypass that installer and put actual logic class with your webpart and start that timer job. Also you could iterate through all SPJobDefinitions and find your Timer Job in that SPWebApplication.JobDefinitions and start from there programmatically.

I hope that someone else gets a bright ideas like this. Now when I look at this I can say that this is not much but when you go all the way through the process of thinking, trying and failing and trying again, the feeling is something very different.. Btw I also had a code that actually went through SPWebApplication.JobDefinitions and added the timer job deep in there and executed the timer job but it led me having synchronous timer job with web part. Not nice in this case but possible

Okay btw. I am sorry for the baaad english

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