Netlify Scheduled Functions allow us to do some interesting things.

Here’s how to set them up.

Create a serverless function in netlify/functions in your repository, for example test.js:

netlify/functions/test.js

exports.handler = (event, context) => {
  //do something
  return { statusCode: 200 }
}

Then in netlify.toml (create this file if you don’t have it yet) configure how frequently you want this Netlify Scheduled Function to run:

[functions."test"]
schedule = "@hourly"

Alternatively you can set this in the function itself, with no need for this entry:

const handler = (event, context) => {
  //do something
  return { statusCode: 200 }
}

exports.handler = schedule('@hourly', handler)

@hourly runs every hour at minute 0 @daily runs every day at 00:00 @weekly runs every Sunday at 00:00

@monthly and @yearly are available too.

You can also use a cron expression, like 5 4 * * * or any other expression (crontab guru is your friend)

You can also invoke a function manually using netlify functions:invoke test where test is the name of the function.

You can use Netlify Scheduled Functions for many different use cases.

I set a Netlify Scheduled Function to auto-deploy the repository every day to post a schedule blog post, for which I set the publishing date in advance.

I use the Fetch API to call the deploy webhook so I can do automatic deploys on Netlify.