Archiving Table contents?

sjparkes

Hi All,

I am new to PHP and MySQL but I have figured most things out. However, my problem is that I want to back up the contents of one of my tables once every day and save it to a new table.

I want this to be done automatically without having no interaction from a user.

The table is relatively small and contains about 300 records/ 5 fields.

My host allows me to use PHP/ASP/CGI but I have no idea where to start tackling the problem

Any ideas gratefully recieved...

May I also thank everyone who has entered anything in this forum - it's an invaluable learning resource.

StevieJ

Anon

Stevie,

The ideal situation would be to use a scheduled (cron or winscheduler) job on the server to do this. Unfortunately, most hosting companies are pretty loathed to put entries into schedule tables.

This means that you will need to schedule a job at your (client) end of things.

Justin

[deleted]

"This means that you will need to schedule a job at your (client) end of things."

You can cheat.
All you need is a task that is run at least once a day. (preferably at 3AM, but beggers can't be choosers)

Your webpages are executed all day long,
so you can use those to trigger the backup (not to a different table, because that's pretty uselss if the database crashes isn't it?🙂 )

For example, you can add a small check in your front-page, that simply checks wether 'todays backup' has been done or not.

If yes, continue.
If not, start the backup.
You can fork that into the background so the user who did requested that page doesn't notice.

Note: this is not a 'good thing (tm)', but needs must when your ISP doesn't play nice.

A forum, a FAQ, what else do you need?