Time question

Duskwalker

Im working on a web based MMORPG, so i can sort of have fun while Im learning php, and i have a quick question.

Is it possible to have a user click a link, then from 2 hrs when they click it, have a query ran adding something to my database?

In the game you can rent a store, and I want it so they have to wait 6 hrs from the time they decide to rent a store, so it seems like someone has to set it up for them etc.

I hope I explained that right.

Thanks for any help.

-Dusk

Shrike

PHP only runs for the lifetime of the script. It is possible I guess to have a script sleep() for 2 hours, but that's impractical. The solution would be to dynamically create a cronjob (on *nix) or a schedule (on Win) which will allow you to run a script at a specified time. I'm pretty sure that there will be lots of problems in dynamically creating these.

The other solution would be to record the time which the user requested a shop to be set up, and the next time they log in, check whether the time has expired, and if so then run the query before doing anything else, and they will have their store. The downside of this approach is that the user could be left with a blank screen while PHP does it's stuff.

hth.

Weedpacket

This has come up before. See
http://www.phpbuilder.com/board/showthread.php?s=&threadid=10230654&highlight=game+programming

cwissy

have your script write a text file to the server file system (possibly outside of the web root for security)
create a cron job to check for the existance of the file. If it is there perform the actions in it then delete it, (if it isn't there do nothing)

superwormy

Why not just insert a timestamp field into the database set to time() + 2 hours, and when you go to select stores, just SELECT WHERE timestamp_field > time()

???

That seems an awefully lot easier than dynamic cronjobs or file creation...