Running scheduled methods on tomcat

I am trying to set up a method that will be automatically run by the server at a specific time. For instance, a method that sends out emails to contacts every Friday at 9.00 am. I have seen methods that are run when the server is first started and was wondering if what I want to do is possible. If it is possible, can someone point me to where I can start reading up how to do this. Any help w开发者_开发技巧ill be highly appreciated.

There is an excellent library quartz which can help you create scheduled tasks within your application. See e.g., the Job Scheduling in Java guide by o'reilly.

If you really want to do it manually (and not use specific tools like Quartz), you could use a Timer, which would be created when the application is deployed and canceled when the application is destroyed, using a ServletContextListener declared in your web.xml.

Be prepared for additional complexity if your application is clustered on multiple servers, though.

I also recommend using Quartz as Johan already suggested, it is a well-established solution for job scheduling in Java applications and also allows for central job storage in a database and clustering of multiple Tomcat instances.

In case your web application uses the Spring Framework, you could instead use the built-in scheduling support instead.