Can a PHP script be run regularly on a server without requests from a client?

Question

I\'ll be writing a script to parse text documents into a MySQL database. I\'ll be converting PDF\'s to text with a separate utility. These PDF\'s will be submitted via e-m

Answer 1

PHP itself cannot perform tasks by itself without a client request.

The common way to to use cron job to schedule run scripts (shell, perl, PHP, python.. etc).

If you are running on IIS, then you can use Schedule Tasks in Windows.