Schedule scripts without using CRON
command-line-interface, cron, php, scripting
Solution
It's not a bad method, but you need to ensure that by closing the socket it isn't just terminating the script before it finishes. You can set sockets to non-blocking.
I would still use a cron job, even if it is a bit of a pain.
Problem
I know there are many posts about using CRON to run a php file. But, in the world of shared hosting, and ease of setup for a user, I don't want to have to mess with that. I found another solution online that has to do with sockets. Just wanted to get everyones take on this, and tell me if this is a good or bad idea. Sounds like it works well. Thoughts? ``` //Open socket connection to cron.php $socketcon = fsockopen($_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'],80,$errorno,$errorstr,10); if($socketcon) { $socketdata = "GET /cron.php HTTP 1.1\r\nHost: ".$_SERVER['HTTP_HOST']."\r\nConnection: Close\r\n\r\n"; fwrite($socketcon,$socketdata); //Normally you would get all the data back with fgets and wait until $socketcon reaches feof. //In this case, we just do this: fclose($socketcon); } else { //something went wrong. Put your error handler here. } ``` cron.php: ``` //This script does all the work. sleep(200); //To prove that this works we will create an empty file here, after the sleep is done. //Make sure that the webserver can write in the directory you're testing this file in. $handle = fopen('test.txt','w'); fclose($handle); ``` Found the script from a blog post: http://syn.ac/tech/13/creating-php-cronjobs-without-cron-and-php-cli/