What is the best method for running scheduled jobs in PHP?

[mikemike27]

I have a webpage form that requires a date and time to be submitted. When it's submitted I need the back-end to run a script at the time and date specified.

 

Have you ever needed to do something like this?  I've tried the exec() function with an at command inside. It won't work. I have no idea why and there doesn't seem to be a lot of advice on google about this. so either no one has ever had a problem with it before or no one has ever tried because there is a much simplier way.

 

I've also tried a shell script but I didn't really understand what I was typing. It was mostly a guess. Here it is;

 

$fileOutput = "#!/bin/bash\n\n";
$fileOutput.= "php ".$doc_root."/byot/author/publish_tables.php jobid=".$jobid." ".$result." catid=".$catid." docroot=".$doc_root;

$myFile = $doc_root."/byot/author/publishjob".$jobid.".sh";
$fh = fopen($myFile, 'w') or die("can't open file");
fwrite($fh, $fileOutput);
fclose($fh);

shell_exec('chmod a+x '.$myFile);

$fileOutput = "#!/bin/bash\n\n";
$fileOutput.= "at $publishTime $publishday.$publishmonth.$publishyear -f $myFile";

$runfile = $doc_root."/byot/author/runat".$jobid.".sh";
$fh = fopen($runfile, 'w') or die("can't open file");
fwrite($fh, $fileOutput);
fclose($fh);

shell_exec('chmod a+x '.$runfile);
exec($runfile);

 

Any tips or advice greatly appreciated!

[trq]

Your best bet would be to store the daytime in a database, then have a corn job run every minute that checks this database to see if it needs to execute your task.

 

[xyph]

Mmm... corn job... *drools*

 

CRON is what you're looking for

[trq]

Yeah, the predictable text on my phone can be a pain. there will prob be a few similar posts over the next week or so as I'm off work and moving house. no Adsl for me.