What options are there for executing a PHP script at a certain time every day?

Question

I have a PHP script that needs to be run at certain times every weekday. Is cron or Windows task scheduler the only way to do this?
Is there a way to set th

Answer 1

Well since the web is a pull mechanism you have to have some sort of action that will trigger a PHP script to execute. cron is an option on *nix and task scheduler on windows. You could also write your own service that has a timer but only if needed, this is common on windows services for updaters, jobs etc.

One way you could do it is in the cron task just call a php script for each action needed. Or one php script that executes other tasks. The problem with web based tasks though such as PHP is timeouts. Make sure your tasks are under 60-90 seconds. If not you might look at using python , perl or ruby or even bash scripts to do the work rather than the PHP script.

cron seems like the best option for you though. You will have to call your script with wget. There are examples here: http://www.thesitewizard.com/general/set-cron-job.shtml

For instance this runs the script everyday at 11:

30 11 * * * /usr/bin/wget http://www.example.com/cron.php