Schedule PHP event using Cron in WinXP

**jyoun** · Jan 21, 2006 11:34

Can someone help me understand this Cron business? I started doing some research but got kinda lost. It's also the first time for me doing some of these things. I currently am using an external device for scheduling and triggering PHP scripts, and it's working ok, but it's becoming clear that that is just an extra un-needed step as I can do it all "in-the-box". I'm using WinXP running PHP version 5.x and a recent version of Apache...

I simply need to be able to setup a day's worth of events that trigger a PHP script located on the same machine. I'll need to pass it perameters to call spacific functions and check on other things - which I'm already doing now, but I imagine it's gonna have to be handled differently using Cron...

First of all, my biggest question, what version should I use? I found several of them, some free, some not... will pycron be cool? Or simply Cron (on that same website)? I don't need any GUI like in "VisualCron", a text file is enough.

So, help me understand, Cron is always checking this text file that contains info for when and what to execute. If I want to be able to make modifications, or to load an entire day's worth of events, I can simply edit the text files using fopen, fread, fwrite commands? I've not used these yet but feel confident in getting this part to work, but is this the most elegent way to go about it?

Because the PHP files I want to trigger are local (on the same machine I'll be having Cron running), will I need something like Wget? When I setup the commands in the CRONTAB file, I can simply use "php.exe" followed by the filename and any arguments I want?

Any examples would be great, or if I'm totally off on something or not clear please chime in. My last question, which is not super important, Is there a "Cron" that can trigger things at specified second, like at 12:35:30 PM?

**bokehman** · Jan 21, 2006 17:51

Cron jobs are a Unix feature not windows.

**musher** · Jan 21, 2006 19:04

Unix cron daemon's only go down to minutes I believe, so you can't run jobs half way through a minute. Unless you put a

PHP Code:


sleep(30)

in your script. I assume it's the same for the windows versions.

**jyoun** · Jan 22, 2006 11:23

I don't understand, I'm using Cron in Windows right now, seems fine...

OK so maybe I answered my own question in regards to what version to get. The other questions still apply...

Thanks

**triexa** · Jan 22, 2006 11:49

If you're on windows... why are you trying to download some cron program as oppose to using the built-in task scheduler?

**jyoun** · Jan 22, 2006 12:03

I'd just like to explore other options, and this seems easier to use and more flexible. I've definately looked at working with the bulit-in windows scheduler but I'm not entirely hapy with it so far.