debugging long running PHP script

Question

I have php script running as a cron job, extensively using third party code. Script itself has a few thousands LOC. Basically it\'s the data import / treatment script. (JSON to

Answer 1

I have a similar thing running each night (a cron job to update my database). I have found the most reliable way to debug is to set up a log table in the database and regularly insert / update a json string containing a multi-dimensional array with info about each record and whatever useful info you want to know about each record. This way if your cron job does not finish you still have detailed information about where it got up to and what happened along the way. Then you can write a simple page to pull out the json string, turn it back into an array and print useful data onto the page including timing and passed tests etc. When you see something as an issue you can concentrate on putting more info from that area into the json string.