Cron job?

[JohnM]

Is there any way to execute a PHP script in a cron job?

Thanks.

[Godin]

should be able to, since PHP can be used on the command line in the same way as PERL, however you do need to put a tag on the command line if you want the supress the HTTP headers PHP sends by default, cant remember what it is tho.

[Chris Schreiber]

Simple

Just do a crontab -e from the command prompt to edit your cron file. There are entries seperated by white space (spaces or tabs), then are in this order:

minute  hour  day_of_month  month  weekday  command

So to run a script a 3am just do this:

0 3 * * * command

Or every 10 minutes:

0,20,40 * * * * command

Now the command should look something like this:

/path/to/php /path/to/myscript.php

I usually use something like the following:

/usr/local/php/bin/php /www/progresstalk.com/htdocs/script.php >/dev/null 2>&1

The ">" will re-direct all output to a file. In this case, I am redirecting all output to the null device, meaning I don't care about it. The "2>" is where you want the error messages, if any, to be sent. I am sending the errors to the standard output, which again is /dev/null.

[bira]

Chris, at the risk of sounding like an utter idiot, how do I find my PHP path on the server? (the equivalent of "/usr/local/php/bin/php").

I looked in /usr/bin, /usr/sbin/ /bin/, /sbin/, nada.

I have a dir /usr/local/lib/php but that only includes the ini file and other php files.

I am at a loss where else to look.

Can you suggest an idea of where I should look?

(my php info can be found at http://www.atlasf1.com/php.php if that helps).

[Mas*Mind]

telnet:

whereis php

[bira]

Ack Mas*Mind you break my heart Of course I did that already - it was the first thing I did and it didn't help me at all.

php: /usr/src/php-4.0.4pl1/php.ini-dist /usr/src/php-4.0.4pl1/php.ini-optimized /usr/src/php-4.0.4pl1/php4.gif /usr/src/php-4.0.4pl1/php4.spec /usr/local/lib/php /usr/local/lib/php.ini

I think maybe I only have PHP as an Apache module, and maybe Chris here is referring to a CGI installation?

[4php]

If you haven't got php installed as a cgi - call the script via its url using lynx or wget - to simulate browser access.

[Chris Schreiber]

If you don't have the PHP execuatable available, then you can replace this:

/usr/local/php/bin/php /www/progresstalk.com/htdocs/script.php >/dev/null 2>&1

With something like this:

/usr/bin/lynx -dump [url]http://www.progresstalk.com/script.php[/url]

[bira]

I've read somewhere that the problem of using lynx in cron, is that the process doesn't die and then you end up with loads if lynx processes running.

[bira]

the lynx -dump option works well, thanks!

[bira]

Help!

The cron job isn't working

If I type in telnet

/usr/bin/lynx -dump http://www.atlasf1.com/scriptname.php

It works perfectly.

I put in cron this line:

0 * * * * /usr/bin/lynx -dump http://www.atlasf1.com/scriptname.php >/dev/null 2>&1

And nothing happens at all - it does not work.

Ideas?

[bira]

ok, I fixed it. Aparently there's a bug in lynx (it was fixed in newer version), and to run this via cron I had to add TERM=vt100 to the crontab.

[ashy]

mysql_connect problem

I have been trying to use the last10.php hack for generating news headlines on another site - so trying to use Chris S idea of write to HTM file like

/usr/bin/php /path/to/last10.php > /path/to/last10.htm

I am getting "Call to undefined fuction mysql_connect() from last10.php - It does work ok if called from the browser.

I am venturesonline server - everything else working great.

Did anyone ever do a "moreover" type news link update for vbulletin databases - that would be great - I would chip in for that!