[RESOLVED] Do I need a cron job

[ade234uk]

All the years I have used .php I have never once used a cron job. Do I need a cron job for the following:

I have products displayed in my catalogue. They are listed for 30 days.
When the end time is less than the current time (UNIX TIMESTAMP), I want to update the status of the record automatically by updating the record in MySQL, without any user interaction.

So do I write an if statement and code to update the record normally or would I require a cron job?

[bradgrafelman]

There are a few ways to do it depending upon your application:

1. Use a cron job.

2. Use MySQL's CREATE EVENT syntax to create a recurring event that runs the UPDATE query.

3. Run the UPDATE query every time you query the DB (or perhaps only when you need to actually use the information that could potentially be updated).

[ade234uk]

Thank you for very for the advice. I will try all three.

I think I know how I can do this.
I will only display items where end_time < current_time on the site.

Then say every 30 minutes run a cron job where

if end_time < current_time and online_status = 0
// Update status of item