Documentation

Scheduling & Automation

How to configure cron intervals, custom frequency, provider rotation, pagination, and the Query Builder for automated fetching.

Cron Intervals

Ingestics uses WordPress cron to schedule automatic fetches. Go to Ingestics → Schedule to select your desired fetch interval. The following intervals are available by tier:

Click Save Schedule. WordPress cron (aapi_cron_fetch for Lite/Pro, or aapi_api_cron_fetch + aapi_rss_cron_fetch for Business) is registered immediately, and the next scheduled run time is displayed in the Schedule tab.

Custom Frequency Business

Set a fetch interval in hours rather than the predefined steps. For example, 0.5 gives a 30-minute fetch, 1.5 gives every 90 minutes; enter 0.25 for every 15 minutes or 2 for every 2 hours. Pro includes a fixed 12-hour interval; custom-frequency scheduling requires Business.

1. On the scheduling settings, select Custom Interval from the frequency dropdown.
2. Enter the interval in hours (minimum: 0.25 h — i.e. 15 minutes; maximum: 168 h).
3. Save. The cron reschedules immediately.

Business tier adds separate custom intervals for API and RSS providers independently — on Business, you can set separate intervals for the API pipeline and the RSS pipeline.

WordPress cron runs on page load and is only triggered by site visitors. On low-traffic sites, consider using a real cron job (server-level cron calling wp-cron.php) for precise timing.

Provider Rotation Lite+

1. Enable Rotation in the Schedule settings.
2. When rotation is enabled, each cron run fetches from the next provider in sequence rather than all providers simultaneously. This distributes API calls evenly over time.
3. On Business tier, API providers and RSS providers maintain separate rotation queues — you can rotate each independently.
4. Use the provider toggle to exclude a specific provider from the rotation without deleting it.

Pagination

Ingestics supports cursor-based and offset-based pagination for APIs that return results across multiple pages. In your API provider settings, enable Pagination.

Page-Based Pagination Lite+: Set the page parameter name (e.g. page), the starting page number, and the maximum number of pages to fetch per run.

Cursor / Next-Token Pagination Pro+: Set the response field that contains the next cursor/token and the request parameter name to send it as on the following request. Ingestics reads the cursor or next-page token from the response and automatically follows pages until no more results are returned or the configured item limit is reached, handling the rest automatically across runs.

Note: transient caching is automatically disabled for paginated providers to ensure fresh data on each run.

Exponential Backoff Retry Pro+: On rate-limit or server errors (HTTP 429, 500–503), Ingestics retries the request with exponentially increasing delays before marking the fetch as failed.

Query Builder Pro+

1. Open an API provider’s settings and click Open Query Builder.
2. Select parameters to add: Country (ISO 3166-1 alpha-2), Category (contextual to the API type), Language (ISO 639-1), or Domain whitelist/blacklist.
3. Each selection is translated to the correct query parameter for that provider type.
4. Click Apply — the query parameters are written back to the provider URL or params fields automatically.
5. Use Load Planned Call in the Inspector to verify the constructed URL before fetching. See Connecting Your First Source for the Call Inspector.