[Q] Automatic (i.e., scheduled) access to another web page

[Michael T. Peterson]

Hi again,

I need to be able update my web site with info from a remote web site. At
this other web site, the info I require is updated every 30 minutes, 24
hours per day. Life would be cool if a way existed by which I could
"schedule" my code to run periodically so that my info could remain
[reasonably] synchronized with the info on this other site.

In the PHP docs / books I have I've been unable to find functions / services
/ examples that might permit me to implement this functionality. Do [php]
services/classes exist that would meet this need? Do I need to invoke the
services of my WEB server (apache on both ends)?

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Michael

[Chris Jenkinson]

Re: [Q] Automatic (i.e., scheduled) access to another web page

Michael T. Peterson wrote:
[color=blue]
> Hi again,
>
> I need to be able update my web site with info from a remote web site. At
> this other web site, the info I require is updated every 30 minutes, 24
> hours per day. Life would be cool if a way existed by which I could
> "schedule" my code to run periodically so that my info could remain
> [reasonably] synchronized with the info on this other site.
>[/color]

You should write a cron script (look on Google for some tutorials) which
starts a PHP script to do what you want to happen. The PHP script will
grab the info you want, and the cron script will make it run every 1/2 hour.

Chris

--
Chris Jenkinson

[Daniel Tryba]

Re: [Q] Automatic (i.e., scheduled) access to another web page

Michael T. Peterson <mtp1032@comcas t.net> wrote:[color=blue]
> I need to be able update my web site with info from a remote web site. At
> this other web site, the info I require is updated every 30 minutes, 24
> hours per day. Life would be cool if a way existed by which I could
> "schedule" my code to run periodically so that my info could remain
> [reasonably] synchronized with the info on this other site.[/color]

Scheduling isn't provided by PHP, but it can be by tools on the
webserver (or any other machine requesting the update page regularly).

But there is no need to update every 30 minutes, you only need to update
if you cached version is requested and the cached data is more than 30
minutes old. The only problem is multiple requests on an update, but
htat is what flock(ing) is for...

--

Daniel Tryba