[PHP] live update?

[Andrew Lyle Global Moderator]

I had an idea that the system database would updates itself at a specific time.. say January 1, 1008, at 12:01am, and send out an email or, update the entire database, and remove all dates from 2007.

Is it possible for the server to actually update itself using PHP and Mysql, without having human interactions on the page?

My real idea is to prune every day 7 days back, every day. So at 12:01, it would remove last weeks entry for this posting, and only keep 7 days history.

[samg]

cron jobs in your cpanel...

[Andrew Lyle Global Moderator]

I don't have cpanel.. my company uses something called H-Sphere

[generalt]

http://www.webcron.org/index.php?〈=en

^^Free Cron Jobs

[Andrew Lyle Global Moderator]

Is there no active script that can do this. All I see on that web site is a url you can enter that will update at that time

my server is running off of Linux

[generalt]

I've been looking for a script like this as well, but I have not found a way to do it...

[Kudos Veteran]

How does http://www.webcron.org/index.php?〈=en not do the job?

[generalt]

oh i think *nix uses cron tabs

[sbohan]

Maybe a little explanation as to what a cron job is would help :).

Basically and I am no authority on cron jobs at all! They are system calls that you can schedule to be performed at a set recurring time, be it minutes, hours, days etc... In your case you will want to create a script on your website that performs the database queries you require to be run and write it so it executes at run time with no need for conditionals or user interaction.

<?
mysql_query("DELETE FROM `table1` WHERE `date`<='$last_week'",dbcnx());
?>

Something as basic as that would suffice. Then once the script is completed and working, i.e when you visit said script through a web browser and then check your database all information (that you wanted to) has been successfully removed. Once this is complete set up a cron job using the link provided or even on your own server where possible that looks something like:

01 12 * * * lynx http://www.link.to/script.php

The cron job will then be ran everyday at 12:01 until it is removed from the crontab, for more information on cron jobs in general try here.

[Andrew Lyle Global Moderator]

How does http://www.webcron.org/index.php?〈=en not do the job?

I'm trying to run it off my own server, without the help of an off site service

or am I not understanding this at all?

some of this stuff requires me to edit folders I don't have access to on my server.. So maybe I better think of a different solution

Edited October 13, 2007 by lylesback2

[-Alex-]

The post above you briefly explains how to achieve this without an 'off-site service'. Cron FTW :)

[Andrew Lyle Global Moderator]

The post above you briefly explains how to achieve this without an 'off-site service'. Cron FTW :)

but that requires editing files within linux files itself... something I can't access within H-Sphere...

I know how to briefly use Ubuntu, and some of the commands, but I don't see how I can access these folders

root@pingu # cat /etc/crontab

[metal_dragen Veteran]

If you don't want to use an off-site service and don't have access to cron on your server, then the only way you can do this relies on either you or a visitor to the site hitting a page to trigger it.

Brief overview: write your script to perform the operations you want -> create a text file that holds a start date -> include a check on some page (index or something) to check the date in the file against the current date -> if it's whatever your range is ( >7 days or whatever), call the script that performs your operations and then write a new date to the file.

This is the only way I know of that will do this without cron or an off-site cron service (which essentially does the same thing as I outlined above, but can hit the script on an exact schedule). This method is imprecise as it relies on someone hitting the page to trigger the script which, depending on how many visitors your site has, can delay it significantly.

[Andrew Lyle Global Moderator]

If you don't want to use an off-site service and don't have access to cron on your server, then the only way you can do this relies on either you or a visitor to the site hitting a page to trigger it.

Brief overview: write your script to perform the operations you want -> create a text file that holds a start date -> include a check on some page (index or something) to check the date in the file against the current date -> if it's whatever your range is ( >7 days or whatever), call the script that performs your operations and then write a new date to the file.

This is the only way I know of that will do this without cron or an off-site cron service (which essentially does the same thing as I outlined above, but can hit the script on an exact schedule). This method is imprecise as it relies on someone hitting the page to trigger the script which, depending on how many visitors your site has, can delay it significantly.

thats not a bad idea. Just use an if statement to trigger the event, run the removal once, and write another date to the file.

I was hoping to use this live update idea, since it could come in handy in the future, but that will need to wait another time