running a php task every 24 hours

Question

I have some functions that use curl to pull information off a couple of sites and insert them into my database. I was just wondering what is the best way to go about executi

Answer 1

If for whatever you decide that cron or windows scheduler is not appropriate, I've sometimes found it handy to write a quick Java app that does the same thing:

You can use the calls System.getRuntime().exec("cmd line stuff here");. You can then warp that operation in a TimerTask. Finally, you fire up a Timer object by adding TimerTasks and specifying the times and frequency etc...

This is clearly more complicated than the above mentioned examples however I like it because you can throw in some intelligent error handling and send yourself email alerts or the like when something screws up.

Probably overkill but possibly worth looking at if you ever have several such operations to deal with.

sweeney