PHP Script Automation - NOT CRON or AT

cscalzo

I have written a PHP based web app that also uses command line php to do a bunch of batch processing tasks such as importing data for integration tasks, output reports in PDF, etc. My batch processing and the UI code share lots of PHP classes, functions, etc. I want to try to avoid porting all of this PHP code I have written to another language.

I have been searching the web for a few days now for a product (preferably open source) that will execute PHP scripts at scheduled times. However I don't want the php scripts to be run by the Windows Task Scheduler or CRON, rather I am looking for a product that invokes the ZEND engine and processes scripts within the same executable. I don't know if this is possible but it would be nice if this launched a thread every time it executed a script. This way if a few scripts were running at once I wouldn't have multiple instances of the php engine running.

I am looking for a rather elegant solution to handle the automation of running PHP scripts because I prefer a tighter integration with my product that cron or win task scheduler offers. Furthermore, I would also like to be able to control all of the properties of automatic script execution such as setting times to run, enable/disable, add a script, etc. from a web interface.

Does anybody know of a product like this? Does anyone have a need for a product like this or does CRON or windows AT serve your purposes OK. Also could this product be written on PHP and run on WIN32?

Thanks for your input and suggestions.

coditoergosum

I use the windows task scheduler pretty heavily and it works great for me. It would nice to have a web UI on it, but there isn't anything out there like that currently that I know of.

Why don't you want to use the task scheduler?

"rather I am looking for a product that invokes the ZEND engine and processes scripts within the same executable. " That's exactly what an auto task does... you point it at the .exe version of php and just pass the path to the script as an arg. i.e. c:\php\php.exe c:\htdocs\myscript.php . In fact, the only thing you mentioned that task scheduler doesn't have is a web interface. If you were on a *nix box cron would do all of it and more... it even has a web UI.

cscalzo

What I am looking for is a very tight integration with my web application that I distribute. If my product was a "service" based web product and maintained and my customers simply accessed my web site, I would be very pleased with Task Scheduler. But since my web app gets distributed my like shrinkwrapped software I would like to have a tighter integration for support purposes via web interface.

I may consider writing a PHP front end to Task Scheduler for windows.

"That's exactly what an auto task does... you point it at the .exe version of php and just pass the path to the script as an arg. i.e. c:\php\php.exe c:\htdocs\myscript.php .

...task scheduler launches DOS command windows each time it runs a php script...This is very annoying and a bit unprofessional I feel for my product.

Also I was wondering if a php script could be run in a seperate thread. Not a seperate PHP process. If I had 3 simultaneous PHP scripts through task scheduler does 3 seperate instances of php.exe get started?

Thanks.