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Schema tutorialLesson 15: Sending a daily summary of activity

Lesson 15: Sending a daily summary of activity

We can integrate Gato GraphQL with WP-Cron, as to automate the execution GraphQL queries that perform admin tasks, with some time interval. (The Automation extension is required.)

In this tutorial lesson, we set-up WP-Cron to, every 24 hs, execute a GraphQL query that retrieves the number of new comments added to the site, and sends these stats to the desired email account.

GraphQL query with daily stats of new comments

This GraphQL query sends an email indicating the number of new comments added to the site for several periods of time:

  • In the last 24 hs
  • In the last 1 year
  • Since the beginning of the month
  • Since the beginning of the year

We create a Persisted Query with slug "daily-stats-by-email-number-of-comments" and content:

query CountComments {
  DATE_ISO8601: _env(name: DATE_ISO8601) @remove
 
  timeToday: _time
  dateToday: _date(format: $__DATE_ISO8601, timestamp: $__timeToday)
  
  timeYesterday: _intSubstract(substract: 86400, from: $__timeToday)
  dateYesterday: _date(format: $__DATE_ISO8601, timestamp: $__timeYesterday)
  
  time1YearAgo: _intSubstract(substract: 31536000, from: $__timeToday)
  date1YearAgo: _date(format: $__DATE_ISO8601, timestamp: $__time1YearAgo)
 
  timeBegOfThisMonth: _makeTime(hour: 0, minute: 0, second: 0, day: 1)
  dateBegOfThisMonth: _date(format: $__DATE_ISO8601, timestamp: $__timeBegOfThisMonth)
 
  timeBegOfThisYear: _makeTime(hour: 0, minute: 0, second: 0, month: 1, day: 1)
  dateBegOfThisYear: _date(format: $__DATE_ISO8601, timestamp: $__timeBegOfThisYear)
  
  commentsAddedInLast24Hs: commentCount(filter: { dateQuery: { after: $__dateYesterday } } )
    @export(as: "commentsAddedInLast24Hs")
  commentsAddedInLast1Year: commentCount(filter: { dateQuery: { after: $__date1YearAgo } } )
    @export(as: "commentsAddedInLast1Year")
  commentsAddedSinceBegOfThisMonth: commentCount(filter: { dateQuery: { after: $__dateBegOfThisMonth } } )
    @export(as: "commentsAddedSinceBegOfThisMonth")
  commentsAddedSinceBegOfThisYear: commentCount(filter: { dateQuery: { after: $__dateBegOfThisYear } } )
    @export(as: "commentsAddedSinceBegOfThisYear")
}
 
query CreateEmailMessage @depends(on: "CountComments") {
  emailMessageTemplate: _strConvertMarkdownToHTML(
    text: """
 
This is the number of comments added to the site:
 
| Period | # Comments added |
| --- | --- |
| **In the last 24 hs**: | {$commentsAddedInLast24Hs} |
| **In the last 365 days**: | {$commentsAddedInLast1Year} |
| **Since beggining of this month**: | {$commentsAddedSinceBegOfThisMonth} |
| **Since beggining of this year**: | {$commentsAddedSinceBegOfThisYear} |
 
    """
  )
  emailMessage: _strReplaceMultiple(
    search: [
      "{$commentsAddedInLast24Hs}",
      "{$commentsAddedInLast1Year}",
      "{$commentsAddedSinceBegOfThisMonth}",
      "{$commentsAddedSinceBegOfThisYear}"
    ],
    replaceWith: [
      $commentsAddedInLast24Hs,
      $commentsAddedInLast1Year,
      $commentsAddedSinceBegOfThisMonth,
      $commentsAddedSinceBegOfThisYear
    ],
    in: $__emailMessageTemplate
  )
    @export(as: "emailMessage")
}
 
mutation SendDailyStatsByEmailNumberOfComments(
  $to: [String!]!
)
  @depends(on: "CreateEmailMessage")
{
  _sendEmail(
    input: {
      to: $to
      subject: "Daily stats: Number of new comments"
      messageAs: {
        html: $emailMessage
      }
    }
  ) {
    status
  }
}

Scheduling the execution of the GraphQL query via WP-Cron

We must schedule the WP-Cron event to execute the Gato GraphQL hook gatographql__execute_persisted_query, passing along the email to send the email to as argument, and the recurrence (daily).

We do this either via PHP:

wp_schedule_event(
  time(),
  'daily',
  'gatographql__execute_persisted_query',
  [
    'daily-stats-by-email-number-of-comments',
    [
      'to' => ['admin@mysite.com']
    ],
    'SendDailyStatsByEmailNumberOfComments',
    1 // This is the admin user's ID
  ]
);

Or via the WP-Crontrol plugin:

  • Hook name: gatographql__execute_persisted_query
  • Arguments: ["daily-stats-by-email-number-of-comments",{"to":["admin@mysite.com"]},"SendDailyStatsByEmailNumberOfComments",1]
  • Recurrence: Once Daily
New entry in WP-Crontrol
New entry in WP-Crontrol

The 4th argument passed to the WP-Cron event is the ID (as an int) or username (as a string) of the user that must be logged-in when executing the GraphQL query.

(In this case, value 1 is the ID of the admin user, and could have provided username "admin" too.)

Passing this argument is typically needed when executing mutations, as most of these require a user (with the proper capabilities) to be logged-in.