Cron jobs

[TheOriginalH]

I always get our hosting team (managed server) to set these up, but hate not being able to do things!

I currently run a little bit of php on www.meetinthemiddle.co.uk that changes the "featured venue" each time the index.php page is loaded. It just picks a random record from the db. I'd like to actually make this change daily - and obviously a cron job is in order - but I haven't the foggiest how to do it myself.

I could get the team to do it, but would really like to expand my skills base and learn how to do it.

At the mo, I'm guessing that I could make the server load a php page that changes the record daily - am I thinking along the right lines? And if so, can anyone offer a little guidance?

Cheers,

H

[TheRock]

How about this:

Instead of generating a random number (whose random seed is initialized based on time of day in seconds...), you initialize the random seed generator with the current date. Then generate random number (or even just hash the current date in some manner to get a number).

This would eliminate the need for any cron jobs/daily scripts,etc.etc.

[cupid]

Originally posted by TheOriginalH
At the mo, I'm guessing that I could make the server load a php page that changes the record daily - am I thinking along the right lines? And if so, can anyone offer a little guidance?

Yes, you sure could have a cronjob run a php script. But remember, you'll want to compile the php into a cgi first before you can run it as a binary.

Here's a tutorial on creating cgi's with php:
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/PHP-HOWTO-18.html

And here's a tutorial on setting up cronjobs:
http://www.superscripts.com/tutorial/crontab.html

[TheOriginalH]

I believe that is the holy grail I've been looking for, thanks very much

I'm a little confused about the whole php/cgi thing, but then I always have been and need to understand it better...

[Absolutus]

fetch -o - http://www.yoursite.com/yourscript.php

should work

[Owen]

Or use fetch or lynx and access the page actomatically online using a password protected page. It's easy and works well

Owen