Repeating Script.

Iquil

Is there a way to get a script to run say every minute or so without needing a page to be viewed?

So that say your site was made up of 3 pages:
index
about
contact

Then you have an extra page that would run every minute or so:
repeating script

Any idea's??

etully

Search PHPBuilder or Google for cron or cronjob. You can use the wget command or the php command to invoke the script as often as you want.

Iquil

cool thank you etully

Iquil

ok i've looked at that but unfortunatly it wont work for what i'm doing.

is there any other way to go about this?

thorpe

Why wont it work?

Iquil

It'd work fine but what this script is to be used as part of a MOD for phpBB. So it will be distributed to people that want to use it but may not have access to cron.

Kardall

Probably a little old but... here's my thoughts.

If your site is busy, you won't want it to run the script everytime someone loads the page. However, you can make it so it "looks" to be updated automatically by introducing to the script.... dun dun dunnnnnnnnnnnnn TimeStamps 🙂

If you have a timestamp "somewhere" that you can read when it was last built, and if the time passed is say, >- 1min. then re-run my_php_script.php

should work fancy dancily.

etully

That's a good solution but it requires that it's a busy site. Since the proposed requirements are that the hosting company might not offer cron, it's reasonable to assume that this will not be a busy site. So If we need a report to be sent out once an hour but the site is only getting hit twice a day, then scripts won't get executed on time. Remember that this is for a PHPBB Mod that will be released to other customers. If they expect the report to be delivered once an hour, they are going to report it as a bug when the site is only reporting twice a day (because the site is only getting hit twice a day).

So the question boils down to, "Can we simulate cron functionality without cron?" And I think that the answer is no. Therefore, I think that the solutiuon is one of these:

A. Set it as a requirement that for this feature, you must have cron
B. If you want this feature and you don't have cron, you must visit the web site periodically and load up a specific page in your browser.

Frankly,  you can get a PHP hosting service that comes with cron for $5 per month.  If they aren't willing to shell out five bucks,  they aren't really serious about the site in my opinion.

Kardall

Unless the php script is dependant upon some "OTHER" outside source as reference, and not to something that someone sees on a website, then you can do the timestamp thing.

If the php script has nothing to do with the website currently being visited, then no you can't do anything without crontabs... unfortunately.

You could however, piggy back it onto a busy website 😃 😃 lol i'm sure someone would let you just toss it into theirs... ask first tho 😛

Iquil

cool thanks for the feedback guys 🙂

Kardall

You know, it depends how much you really want it to run on it's own...

php can be run via command line in windows. I'm sure someone has a "scheduler" even if it's not the built in one that will do it... perhaps... anyway... th eother option is use the scheduler and compile your php -> exe with roadsend compiler (need to buy it but it works sweetly)