How to make PHP code work without direct calls (on some kind of timer)?

Question

So... for example I want to add to 1 five every 5 minuts (1 is in the DB)... With out direct calls from users....

So... How to make PHP code work without direct calls (on some kind of timer)?

Answer 1

If I understood you correctly, CRON is what you're looking for (google it)

Answer 2

build a script which does what you need to do. and call it via crontab in the needed interval but make sure its not callable from a user or searchengine.

see http://www.unixgeeks.org/security/newbie/unix/cron-1.html for more information on cron

a typical call could look like:

*/5 * * * *      lynx -source http://yourhost.com/yourscript.php >/dev/null

Answer 3

Yes configuring a cron job is the correct answer. See the Wikipedia article for the syntax of a cron job.

You simply create a new cron job and let it request the page where the script is. The following cron job requests update.php every five minutes.

*/5 * * * * wget http://www.example.com/update.php

Update

Syntax with wget.

Answer 4

If you are unable to schedule cron jobs on your server (as is the case with most cheap hosting solutions), there are some pure php alternatives to run scheduled jobs: phpjobscheduler is one of those alternatives.

Answer 5

Cron is the obvious suggestion.

If you can only invoke your code via the web (i.e. no command line PHP) then you can call a URL using 'wget' or 'curl' on most *nix boxes.

Unless of course your code sits on a microsoft OS (which is unlikely to have cron available) in which case you can use the 'at' service to do the same thing - and there's a free wget.exe out there somewhere.

C.