[RESOLVED] Chronjob Help; opening a php file periodically to update a DB

[SWiers]

Like the title says. I know how to set up a Chronjob on my server, even how to set how often it runs. What I don't know is the command to use that will open a php file. I fact, I'm not even sure it would behave properly if opened in this fashion.

The PHP file in question is one that (up until now) I've been opening "manually" simply by going to it over the web and opening it. But for various reasons, I;d rather just run it every few hours as a chronjob.

Can I/ how do I set this up as a unix command?

[Horizon88]

You'd set up a cron job to run the CLI-command to call your script. You could either do something like:

wget http://localhost/file.php

which would probably work best, since you have it set up for the web. Otherwise, you could rewrite it as a php shell script and call it as

/path/to/file/file.php

which would cause your shell (bash, most likely) to interpret it as a php shell script. Or, you could call it with command-line php mode:

php /path/to/file/file.php

or something along those lines. It's just like setting up a regular cronjob though - just pick which way you want to execute it.

[SWiers]

Hm- the file I want to open is accessable via the web as http://www.urbandead.info/profiles/ProfileImporter.php - what would be the comand for that one? I tried

wget http://localhost/profiles/ProfileImporter.php

but that doesn't seem to work.

EDIT- ah this works:

wget http://www.urbandead.info/profiles/ProfileImporter.php

[TF_TheMoon]

You really don't want to call it over the web as it'll create another connection to your webserver that is not needed as well as taking longer. Its best to call it direct using php pathto/file.php

[Horizon88]

Unless he's calling it every second or something, the extra overhead would be negligible.