Automating Scripts

[pahikua]

I have a site where every night at midnight I would like a script to be executed that queries the database and generates updated xml files. Only I'm not sure how to go about automating scripts. If anybody has some suggestions for me I would appreciate it.

I'm using PHP 4.3, Apache 2.0, Mac OS X as the development server and FreeBSD as the production server.

Mahalo

[Mordecai]

Does OSX have a cron equivalent? If you don't know what cron is, it is a service that runs tasks at a certain time. There are ports for Windows, and the original is for Linux, however, I'm not sure if there's an OSX version. Try searching around Google for it.

[pahikua]

Yeah there is. I've used it a little bit to reschedule some daily tasks. I though about maybe using the crontab file but how do I trigger a script from there?

[Mordecai]

I'm not sure how to use that version, but you should just be able to launch the webpage by the URL somehow.

[pahikua]

thanks for the idea, i've got some ideas buzzing around in my head now.