Chat Script - Timer

[DroopyPawn]

I'm trying to write a chat script.

In Visual Basic, there is a Timer control that you can set to do certain events (whatever you want it to do, basically) repeatedly for as quickly or as slowly as you want. Every second, every 3 seconds, every minute or hour, etc.

Is there anything like this in PHP?

I know I can use the META tag refresh but I'd rather just look at one little text file that contains only one piece of info, a Timestamp for when the last message was entered. Then, if the Timestamp is newer than the timestamp in your browser (maybe in a cookie) you know it's time to refresh. I think this would save bandwith - download one little number instead of an entire HTML file. A few bytes compared to possibly 10k.

I'm just starting in PHP so maybe I'm try something that's not possible. If so, what other suggestions can you make for updating the message section of the chat room?

Thanks, gs

[planetsim]

Once a PHP file has finished loading the script is taken out of memory. Once that has happened the script has finished executing and cannot be used until an action most likely by a user or HTML (meta refresh in this case) causes the script to be reloaded.

I personally hate meta refresh as a form of refreshing a page. It does not give the user much control over what is happening.

Meta Refresh maybe your only alternate but you may want to try JavaScript as well however not all browsers support JavaScript. However using JavaScript will allow the user to turn the refresh off if there is a function there available to the user or just turn javascript off.

[DroopyPawn]

How about VBScript instead? I already know VB but not JS.

[drawmack]

VBScript is only recognized by IE, so it's even worse then JS.