php script sequencer

jlive

I want a php script able to manage a sequence of php scripts.
It (call it master) will be able to scan a list of scripts (call those slave) and run each after the other.

The point is: coding the slave scripts, I don't want to put any care about the fact they will be called by the master script (so, they can stop with exit, ...)

Again I don't want to include all the slave scripts into the master scripts to avoid limits in memory and time.

Any idea ?

drawmack

if you exit or die in a php script that will stop the execution of the master script, so this cannot be done.

devinemke

couldn't you simply use the [man]include[/man] to call the scripts and [man]sleep[/man] to control the timing between them? you could use PHP output buffering functions to control the slave script's output.

drawmack

yes, but he wants to be able to use exit in the slave scripts and if he does that it will stop the execute of the master script. So he can't do what he wants

jlive

devinemke,
other than the exit issue,
using include to collect all the slave scripts into the master I get the result the master script becomes large memory and time consuming, more than the php.ini limits ...

drawmack

come up with a naming convention for the slave scripts. Maybe day.php or hour.php where day is the day it should run or hour is the hour it should run. Then you're master file doesn't need to run all the scripts. Or you could use the curl functions to execute the scripts without including them and that would stop the memory hog issue but you may still have time issues.

jlive

drawmack,
having named the scripts that way, so what ? who then running the slave scripts if not the master ?
can you say more...

(memory and time issues: time is more critical)

drawmack

Let's say you name the script 0-6_name.php where 0 - 6 are representative of the days of the week (0 = sunday, 1 = monday, ..., 6 = saturday) and name is the name the file has now. Then in master.php you can do something like this:

<?php
$dir = 'slave_files';

$dh = opendir($dir);
$day = date('w');
while($file = readdir($dh)) {
    if(ereg("^$day_" . $file) && !is_dir($file)) 
        include($dir . '/' . $file);
} //end while
?>

Then this will only execute the files you have tagged for this day.

jlive

thank you drawmack for your time, but your solution seems not proper to my case

as I said at the beginning, I need the slave scripts be executed in sequence, one starting at the end of the other

I can accept a minimum delay between each slave script start, but 1 minute is exceeding

your master script seems proper if you need to run one and only one script per time, choosen among many, applying some time-depending condition
this is what I understood

in my case, using your master script, I need again a master-master script able to run the master script as many time as the slave scripts are...

drawmack

your best bet is probably to write a perl cron that loads the slave scripts as if it were a browser.

jlive

yes, agree the solution cannot be fully php

at the moment I'm using a solution working with salve scripts not ending with exit: it's not exactly what I wanted, but it's working without including all the slave scripts in the master scripts

now I can run a sequence of many scripts as I want, with each script potentially consuming the max memory and time allowed...
I think that's enough for now