how to do some action at a certain time everyday

scorpioy

Most of the code we write is about event-driven based, such as clicking a button, checkbox or link. How should I write if I want to email to somebody with some information retrieved from some table everyday in the morning at 8:00am? Is it to have a infinite loop, having a sleep command (to sleep one second period), and check if the time is 8:00am now? I am not sure if this is correct, and even don't know where to put this loop. I just don't have much clue about this implementation.

Thanks for any help.

bubblenut

If you're on a *nix server then you can use CRON. On a windows server you can use Scheduled Tasks or download a Windows CRON variant like this one.

HTH
Bubble

scorpioy

My machine is WinXP. I know how to use Windows task scheduler. I tried to put some code in the batch file, but it does not recognize the code:

                $db = mysql_connect("localhost", "root") or die("Could not connect to MySQL server!");
	mysql_select_db("DB",$db);	
	$result = mysql_query("SELECT ..... );

            if ($myrow = mysql_fetch_array($result)) {

      echo " ..... ";
            }

What should I write inside of the batch file?

Thanks.

bubblenut

You'll need to make the batch file find a php script. The line will look something like this.
C:\php\php-cli.exe C:\path\to\script.php
Your code will be in script.php and that will run.

scorpioy

There is no php-cli.exe in my C:\php\

But there is php.exe, so I tried:
C:\php\php.exe C:\Program Files\Apache Group\Apache\htdocs\script.php

Then I got error:

Status: 404
Content-type: text/html
X-Powered-By: PHP/4.3.3

No input file specified.

There is 'cli' folder in C:\php\ and php.exe in that folder, then I tried:
C:\php\cli\php.exe C:\Program Files\Apache Group\Apache\htdocs\script.php

This time the error is:

Could not open input file: C:\Program.

I need help please.

devinemke

put the paths in quotes

MarkR

To be quite honest, I'd change to the script's directory before running it, and put php in the path. That way a simple

php.exe script.php

Will do.

Also it will make things like include() more likely to work as expected.

Also in case you didn't realise, you need to put PHP code inside <?php ?> EVEN IF running it with the standalone CLI.

Mark

scorpioy

After I used double quotation, it works now.
Thanks. 🙂

bubblenut

On a side, is there an equivalent to the unix shebang line which tells the shell which file to run a script with for Windows batch files?