CronTriggers

All of the fields have a set of valid values that can be specified. These values should be fairly obvious - such as the numbers 0 to 59 for seconds and minutes, and the values 0 to 23 for hours. Day-of-Month can be any value 1-31, but you need to be careful about how many days are in a given month! Months can be specified as values between 0 and 11, or by using the strings JAN, FEB, MAR, APR, MAY, JUN, JUL, AUG, SEP, OCT, NOV and DEC. Days-of-Week can be specified as values between 1 and 7 (1 = Sunday) or by using the strings SUN, MON, TUE, WED, THU, FRI and SAT.

The '/' character can be used to specify increments to values. For example, if you put '0/15' in the Minutes field, it means 'every 15th minute of the hour, starting at minute zero'. If you used '3/20' in the Minutes field, it would mean 'every 20th minute of the hour, starting at minute three' - or in other words it is the same as specifying '3,23,43' in the Minutes field. Note the subtlety that "/35" does not* mean "every 35 minutes" - it means "every 35th minute of the hour, starting at minute zero" - or in other words the same as specifying '0,35'.

The 'L' character is allowed for the day-of-month and day-of-week fields. This character is short-hand for "last", but it has different meaning in each of the two fields. For example, the value "L" in the day-of-month field means "the last day of the month" - day 31 for January, day 28 for February on non-leap years. If used in the day-of-week field by itself, it simply means "7" or "SAT". But if used in the day-of-week field after another value, it means "the last xxx day of the month" - for example "6L" or "FRIL" both mean "the last Friday of the month". You can also specify an offset from the last day of the month, such as "L-3" which would mean the third-to-last day of the calendar month. When using the 'L' option, it is important not to specify lists, or ranges of values, as you'll get confusing/unexpected results.

Field Name	Mandatory	Allowed Values	Allowed Special Characters
Seconds	YES	0-59	, - *
Minutes	YES	0-59	, - *
Hours	YES	0-23	, - *
Day of month	YES	1-31	, - * ? / L W
Month	YES	1-12 or JAN-DEC	, - *
Day of week	YES	1-7 or SUN-SAT	, - * ? / L #
Year	NO	empty, 1970-2099	, - *

? ("no specific value") - useful when you need to specify something in one of the two fields in which the character is allowed, but not the other. For example, if you want your trigger to fire on a particular day of the month (say, the 10th), but don't care what day of the week that happens to be, you would put "10" in the day-of-month field, and "?" in the day-of-week field. See the examples below for clarification.

/ - used to specify increments. For example, "0/15" in the seconds field means "the seconds 0, 15, 30, and 45". And "5/15" in the seconds field means "the seconds 5, 20, 35, and 50," You can also specify '/' after the '' character - in this case '' is equivalent to having '0' before the '/'. '1/3' in the day-of-month field means "fire every 3 days starting on the first day of the month".

L ("last") - has different meaning in each of the two fields in which it is allowed. For example, the value "L" in the day-of-month field means "the last day of the month" - day 31 for January, day 28 for February on non-leap years. If used in the day-of-week field by itself, it simply means "7" or "SAT". But if used in the day-of-week field after another value, it means "the last xxx day of the month" - for example "6L" means "the last Friday of the month". You can also specify an offset from the last day of the month, such as "L-3" which would mean the third-to-last day of the calendar month. When using the 'L' option, it is important not to specify lists, or ranges of values, as you'll get confusing/unexpected results.

>W ("weekday") - used to specify the weekday (Monday-Friday) nearest the given day. As an example, if you were to specify "15W" as the value for the day-of-month field, the meaning is: "the nearest weekday to the 15th of the month". So if the 15th is a Saturday, the trigger will fire on Friday the 14th. If the 15th is a Sunday, the trigger will fire on Monday the 16th. If the 15th is a Tuesday, then it will fire on Tuesday the 15th. However if you specify "1W" as the value for day-of-month, and the 1st is a Saturday, the trigger will fire on Monday the 3rd, as it will not 'jump' over the boundary of a month's days. The 'W' character can only be specified when the day-of-month is a single day, not a range or list of days.

Note:

The 'L' and 'W' characters can also be combined in the day-of-month field to yield 'LW', which translates to "last weekday of the month".

# - used to specify "the nth" XXX day of the month. For example, the value of "6#3" in the day-of-week field means "the third Friday of the month" (day 6 = Friday and "#3" = the 3rd one in the month). Other examples: "2#1" = the first Monday of the month and "4#5" = the fifth Wednesday of the month. Note that if you specify "#5" and there is not 5 of the given day-of-week in the month, then no firing will occur that month.

Note:

The legal characters and the names of months and days of the week are not case sensitive. MON is the same as mon.

Expression	Meaning
0 0 12 * * ?	Fire at 12pm (noon) every day
0 15 10 ? * *	Fire at 10:15am every day
0 15 10 * * ?	Fire at 10:15am every day
0 15 10 * * ? *	Fire at 10:15am every day
0 15 10 * * ? 2005	Fire at 10:15am every day during the year 2005
0 * 14 * * ?	Fire every minute starting at 2pm and ending at 2:59pm, every day
0 0/5 14 * * ?	Fire every 5 minutes starting at 2pm and ending at 2:55pm, every day
0 0/5 14,18 * * ?	Fire every 5 minutes starting at 2pm and ending at 2:55pm, AND fire every 5 minutes starting at 6pm and ending at 6:55pm, every day
0 0-5 14 * * ?	Fire every minute starting at 2pm and ending at 2:05pm, every day
0 10,44 14 ? 3 WED	Fire at 2:10pm and at 2:44pm every Wednesday in the month of March.
0 15 10 ? * MON-FRI	>Fire at 10:15am every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday
0 15 10 15 * ?	>Fire at 10:15am on the 15th day of every month
0 15 10 L * ?	>Fire at 10:15am on the last day of every month
0 15 10 L-2 * ?	>Fire at 10:15am on the 2nd-to-last day of every month
0 15 10 ? * 6L	>Fire at 10:15am on the last Friday of every month
0 15 10 ? * 6L	>Fire at 10:15am on the last Friday of every month
0 15 10 ? * 6L 2002-2005	>Fire at 10:15am on every last Friday of every month during the years 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2005
0 15 10 ? * 6#3	>Fire at 10:15am on the third Friday of every month
0 0 12 1/5 * ?	>Fire at 12pm (noon) every 5 days every month, starting on the first day of the month.
0 11 11 11 11 ?	Fire every November 11th at 11:11am.

Be careful when setting fire times between the hours of the morning when "daylight savings" changes occur in your locale (for US locales, this would typically be the hour before and after 2:00 AM - because the time shift can cause a skip or a repeat depending on whether the time moves back or jumps forward. You may find this Wikipedia entry helpful in determining the specifics to your locale: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Daylight_saving_time_around_the_world

The following instructions can be used to inform Quartz what it should do when a misfire occurs for CronTrigger. (Misfire situations were introduced in the More About Triggers section of this tutorial). These instructions are defined as constants on CronTrigger itself (including Javadoc describing their behavior). The instructions include:

All triggers also have the MISFIRE_INSTRUCTION_SMART_POLICY instruction available for use, and this instruction is also the default for all trigger types. The 'smart policy' instruction is interpreted by CronTrigger as MISFIRE_INSTRUCTION_FIRE_NOW. The Javadoc for the CronTrigger.updateAfterMisfire() method explains the exact details of this behavior.