automated form submission

[jphilapy]

I need to create a php script that will submit a form automatically at a certain time during the day. I imagine I will need to use a cron job to do this, and the PHP script will have to be ran in shell mode. Anyone have any ideas of how I can do this?

Thanks,
Jeff

[LordShryku]

Doesn't really sounds like a form i it's automated. A form is made for human interaction. Anyway, if your server is compiled --with-cli, you should be able to just set it up in cron using
/path/to/php /path/to/script.php

[jphilapy]

Actually what I need to do is submit data to a cgi script. The data must be as if it came from a form. So far I have figured that part out.

However now I have a new problem:

<?php
$c = curl_init('myurl_and_cgi_to_post_to');

$body = "This is my test and in it I need to use ampersands. & or &amp;";

curl_setopt($c, CURLOPT_HEADER, 1);
curl_setopt($c, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
curl_setopt($c, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, 'name=test&body=' . $body);
curl_setopt($c, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
$page = curl_exec($c);
curl_close($c);
?>

The code above works but it confuses the ampersands in my $body variable text with the ampersands in the CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS. I need to be able to use the ampersands in my text. How do I work around this?

Thanks much,
Jeff