Refresh Typo3 by web server cron job

Question

Is it possible to force Typo3 to refresh websites by an external trigger (e.g. web server cron job or manual trigger)? Could you please describe some best practices?

Answer 1

Please have a look at Scheduler.

The Scheduler is designed to be the central place to manage all kind of tasks that need to be executed on a regular basis, without needing someone to actually press a button.

If no existing task fits your needs, you can create an own task.

Answer 2

If refreshing means recreating the frontend cache then you could use

config.cache_clearAtMidnight = 1

This will invalidate all FE-Cache entries at midnight, see https://docs.typo3.org/typo3cms/TyposcriptReference/Setup/Config/Index.html#cache-clearatmidnight for documentation.

Answer 3

If you need to clear the Front End cache, due to external changes to content or whatever, you could use the cache manager from the system extensions and build a small swapper extension to clear specific or all page caches. To go through the framework, you would add a task that can be inserted into the planner in the back end. The planner then would be called by a cron job.

I remember an existing extension for that but I don't remember the exact name right now. However, setting a new one up only requires little code (and helps immensely understanding the caching mechanism).