looking 4 Time based Switch code...

[2hawks]

Greetings all.

I am looking for a piece of code to check the date of a file or date field in a database and make a decision on that date for the folowing switch:

switch($action)
{
case "not": // 24 hours have not elapsed.
display();
break;
case "elapsed": // 24 hours have elapsed - update db
getandstore();
display();
break;
}

I have a website that takes a list of squad-members in a popular WWII MMOG and puts the results into a database so the results can be displayed and sorted by category.

the Script I have is kind of heavy on bandwidth, and I would like to run it only once a day. I do not have access to cron. has anyone done this or have a piece of code they can share? any suggestions for a solution?

2Hawks

[HalfaBee]

You probably need to do this with some SQL to select the records to update.
SELECT * from table where date_column < now() - INTERVAL 24 hour
and process the resulting rows returned.

As for bandwidth, bandwidth is only used if you send data to the browser.
Your whole script could probably run with < 1K if you don't send too much back.

HalfaBee

[2hawks]

Is this the actual sql query syntax? assuming I have a field titled date_column?

SELECT * from table where date_column < now() - INTERVAL 24 hour

Notes on the bandwidth issue:

The bandwidth issue comes from pulling roughly 30 web pages and looks for a pattern to extract the data I am looking for, then writes that to my database.

The following piece of code is what I am worried will put a sudden load on the server:

	if (!($fp = fopen($loadurl, "r"))) { echo "Frell. It Bombed for some reason. - Load Stats"; exit; } 
	$contents= fread($fp, 20000); fclose($fp); 	$start=strpos($contents, "FONT SIZE=\"2\">Rank");	$contents=substr($contents, $start);
	preg_match_all ("/font size=\"2\"\>\b[[:digit:]]*\b/i",$contents,  $ranks, PREG_PATTERN_ORDER );
	for ($loop2=0; $loop2<=5; $loop2++) 	{ 	$ranks[0][$loop2]=substr($ranks[0][$loop2], 14); }

It runs this loop once per squad member, about 30 times depending on how many members are found.

Am I being paranoid?

2Hawks