timed random record display

[Anon]

HI
I'm using this code to generate a random number and retrieve a record from the db with that number as the id.what i would like to do is have it do this only once every 24 hours.How?
thanx in advance.
$database = "example";
$login = "";
$pass = "";
$connect = mysql_connect( "localhost", "$login", "$pass");
$select = mysql_select_db($database, $connect);
$quotecount = mysql_query( "select from test") or die(mysql_error());
$quoteanzahl = mysql_num_rows($quotecount);
srand((double)microtime()1000000);
$id = rand(1, $quoteanzahl);
$query = mysql_query( "select * from test where id = $id");
$row = mysql_fetch_array($query);
$id = $row[id];
$message = $row[message];

[Anon]

Random numbers, my personal favorite 😉

Well, the "best" way is to set up a daemon in crontab. If you don't know how/want/can't do that, or you prefer a different method, here is my little home-brewed method.

First, stick your code inside a loop. Have the loop check a file or a value in your database to continue.

At the end of your code, have your script stuff the date/time into your database/file (we'll just say database). This is the value the start of your script will check for.

If that date is 24 hours or more earlier than the date it finds, have it execute the loop.

On any page that displays/uses that data, you'll need to include this "if" loop there.

For all non-time intensive purposes, it will appear to the user that you just have a daemon set up to do your dirty work.

The other possibilty is using sleep() in various ways, but it's not as good or dependable.

[Anon]

This answer is not mine, but its correct and shows you various solutions to this problem(if don't want to use PHP as CGI...), reading in the archiv sometimes really makes sense :-)

cya Rob

Say you don't want to (or can't) recompile php. Get your cron job to contain a shell script which calls:

lynx --dump --show-source http://server/nightly.php3 > /dev/null

A sideways solution is to use randomness.
Say you don't have access to cron. Pick some popular page on your site and at the top, add a random number check. If you roll the dice correctly, then you go do your maintainence function. This way it doesn't hurt much, but it is happening periodically.

Generally the first way is better, though.

There's no point in any usable output from nightly.php3.