Make php do something on a certian date

PHP
1

Is there a way to make PHP do something on a certain date?
Like without a user going to the page and causing PHP to check the date?

Or does this require me to setup a cron type thing per-server?

2

cron is by far the simplest and most reliable way to do so, since it’s a function of the system rather than an external script that might be interrupted…

Is there a particular reason you’re trying to avoid cron?

3

cron would definitely be the way to go. If you have cPanel this is VERY easy to do. There are many tutorials online regarding setting up a cron job.

4

Hey, Because it’s for distributed software I don’t want users to have to monkey with this as it might be fairly confusing.

5

There is no mechanism by which PHP is capable of delaying or setting itself to run at a certain date.

PHP only runs when it’s told to run.

6

If you have a high traffic page you can tell PHP to do something on a certain date, but you have to record that it happened somehow otherwise it will carry out that action ALL DAY LONG.

Here are 2 old threads mentioning “poor mans cron”.

To reiterate: These are not the best solutions, but might work for you.