Automated Task Execution (kind of)

[kajsngweaaweg]

Hey. I need a way of automating a task, but it's slightly complicated so I made up a problem in which the solution to it will solve my problem.

Basically, if no one visits a page for 24 hours I want a script to execute. As far as I know, there's no way of doing this with cron (unless there's a way of creating/modifying cron jobs from php... if there is, I can think of a good way of doing this).

eg:
0:00 user 1 goes to page, timer set to 24 hours
1:00 user 2 goes to page, timer reset to 24 hours
5:00 user 3 goes to page, timer reset to 24 hours
29:00 (24 hours from last visit) somepage.php is executed.

[wilku]

Create empty dummy file. Every time a user visits the page, [man]touch[/man] the file, which will give it's modification time present value.
Run cron job (php script) every hour (if this resolution is sufficient) to check dummy file modification time and if it's older then 24 hours include script you want to run.

[kajsngweaaweg]

Thanks for the reply, but I need a resolution of at most, a minute or two. I should have mentioned that above.

[wilku]

Cron's resolution is a minute, so just run the check every cycle of cron (every minute).