Hijack

Thanks for all your help. Yeah I see how that could work but the problem is I live in one country and am a university student in another so for half the year I only have a laptop. Basically can't manage the logistics of having a computer running permanently.

I see what youre getting at there, but the problem is I cant rely on there being a page request every minute

Hey everyone, So I'm a complete PHP noob and have very basic knowledge of PHP - everything I learn is from tutorials online. I created a website which monitors Stock Exchange data for a particular stock exchange by downloading a CSV file from the Stock Exchange's website containing all the stock data - as this is the only way this particular exchange provides its data to 3rd parties. Now, my PHP system takes this CSV file, reads it and inserts the data into a MySQL database. Then, the function of my site is that users can create alerts for particular stocks that they are watching, and my website will send them an email when the stock price of the stock that they are watching goes above or below a particular value that they specify. Simple! However, since my MySQL database always needs the most recent version of the stock prices, the way I did this in the past was by using Cron every minute to download the file off the exchange's website, and insert the data into my database. I realise that this is quite inefficient, but my main problem is actually that the only way I can do cron every minute is by paying for my own Virtual Dedicated Server as normal shared hosting won't let me run a script that frequently. What I am here to ask is if any of you know an alternative way that I can constantly update the price data in my database i.e. an alternative to cron. I hear that you can run PHP scripts as 'daemons' but I'm not sure how this works nor whether I can do this with normal shared hosting. I cannot afford a Virtual Dedicated server any longer and so need a solution which is compatible with normal, cheap shared hosting. Any help would be much appreciated!