How do I run an SQL query every 24 hours?

Anon

Hi.

I'm building a link list and I want to give every site a fair chance to be on top by rotating the list every 24 hours. For example, today's top site will be site xyz, but tomorrow's top site will be site xyz+100 etc. How do I get the SQL query to run only every 24 hours?

Many thanks!
Rich S

Anon

PHP is not the best idea, IMO, for doing something like this. Depending on platform, you can do one of the following:

Write a perl script or vb program that runs the query and schedule it. I'm biased a bit towards perl.
Write a php script that runs the query and schedule a job that will launch a web browser (lynx) to hit your script, in essense running it.

To schedule the jobs, you can use at on windows or unix and cron on unix.

Anon

(1) Write a page that does what you want.

(2) Trigger execution of the page by setting up a crontab entry that calls lynx or wget to load the page.

Anon

Do I need to store the SQL query in a separate file from the link list so it's not executed every time someone views the page, then have the query write to the html page?

Would it be too hard on my server if I just run the query every time the links page is hit (about 10,000/day)?

Thanks!
Rich S

Anon

Thanks, but I don't know perl.

The second option sounds more along the lines of something I can do. So the script with the query then writes to the html links list? I don't want the query to run every time the someone hits the page.. unless I'm underestimating the efficiency of PHP.

Thanks!
Rich S

Anon

Make 2 separate scripts. One to run the query and the other for user access.

Anon

Rich,

What I think that Chad is saying is to create a page the will execute your script - but the user's will not hit.

Then, anyone viewing this page will cause the queries to run. That is why you would schedule it in crontab to run every twenty four hours by accessing it with Lynx.

If you do take this approach, you should take into consideration that search engines might spider this page, creating a direct link to it. You should then also consider either using a robots.txt file or the little documented meta tag by the name of Robots.

You can find information about that here: http://info.webcrawler.com/mak/projects/robots/exclusion.html

Good luck,

Joseph

Anon

Sorry...

I meant to say "what I think Kirk is saying". I read the names on the thread wrong. Sorry Chad and Kirk...

Thanks,

Joseph

Anon

Just write a PHP script which does what you want and then put this script into crontab and define when do you want it to trigger... that's it.

everyday at 1pm, every hour, every minute, everything is possible :-)

Matjaz /kesl

Anon

I was wondering if someone was going to mention crontabs.

Anon

This place is great! There are so many smart people here willing to help a newbie out!

Thanks again!
Rich S