CGI automation question

Question

I am a career .NET developer, but have recently been delving into the LAMP universe.

I have an Joomla/VirtueMart ecommerce site near ready to launch. The vendor's xml datafeed must undergo transformation before it can be imported into the products database.

I wrote a .NET console app that can easily perform the transform and upload to the site. I am convinced there is a better way.

So I have been looking at cgi scripts. Just from what I have read it seems the only way to execute a cgi script is through an http request. Is there a way to schedule a cgi-script to run at a specific time?

Also, which language works best for transforming xml? C, Perl, or Python?

Answer 1

CGI is basically just an interface defined to execute arbitrary programs on a server by way of a HTTP request, nothing more and nothing less.

How you can execute a program on a server at a specific time depends on the server; both Windows and Linux-based systems usually have a scheduler service. In Linux land it's called cron, and a scheduled job is called a cronjob. If there is no other mechanism provided by whoever hosts your application, you can define jobs using the crontab utility on the server (you'll need shell access for that); its documentation includes (somewhat inaccessible, but there you go) information about what a crontab should look like. There are tons of tutorials on the web, too.

Answer 2

an XSLT transformation is probably your best bet for turning XML files into things you can easily import. An XSLT transform can be processed in any language of your choice.