persistent functions

[Anon]

I am developing an online app and one of the that intended features is that a user can enter various times that are stored in a mysql database. Every day the user is then sent a notification/reminder email at this time (regardless of whether they are logged in or not).

To do this I have a function that queries the database every 5 minutes to see if an email should be sent.

I understand that I could run a php script through my web browser and use php's sleep command to wake the function up every 5 minutes, but this would mean I would have to keep the browser window open/keep a connection to the server while the function was running (wouldn't it?).

Does anyone know a was that I can start this function and just forget about it (ie make it continually run with a helper function to stop/start/pause/kill it running)? The site is running on an apache server that I only have ftp access to.

Any help would be appreciated,
Paul.

[Anon]

To me this could be done but to my understanding you would have to keep the browser open, and thats not at all what you want.

[Anon]

This isn't a problem at all, for linux, cant say for other OS's. I do something very similar. I have a php script run once an hour and update the 'changed/unchanged' status of my bookmarks.

You have to compile php into a cgi. then in cron put a new entry in there.

ie, redhat / mandrake

/etc/cron.hourly/update_bookmarks

and in update_bookmarks

//--------------------------

#!/bin/bash
php -q /home/httpd/vhosts/lee/updatebookmarks.php &

//--------------------------

now once an hour my updatebookmarks.php script gets run.

Chris Lee