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Hot Tips for your Cron Job PHP scripts

Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009

Here are the best tips compiled into a single list for your convenience.  Consider it the “Best of Cronless, 2009″.

Tip 1:  When you save your cron job, Cronless will execute it to ensure that the script is reachable and online.  This is to make sure Cronless has a good URL to use and that you entered the user/password correctly (if necessary).  If you don’t want Cronless to run the script at that time, put this at the beginning of your script while saving the job:

<?php
exit;
?>

Tip 2:  Don’t want to modify your script with Tip 1?  OK, rename the script and put in a temporary script that does nothing using the same filename.  Following these simple steps:

  1. Rename your original script to something different (append “.ORIG” to the end, for example)
  2. Make a new PHP file with the same filename as your original script.  Make sure you put in the <?php ?> for proper execution.
  3. Save your job on Cronless using the URL you want.
  4. Move your original script with new suffix (.ORIG) back to the server with the correct filename.
  5. Let Cronless do the rest!

Tip 3:  If you have timeouts when running your script, make sure that you setup PHP to ignore the timeout value when running.

Tip 4:  Using PHP to backup a database is very easy.  Here’s a complete database backup script you can use.

Tip 5:  Want to make sure your site is always online?  Use Cronless’ Site Monitor feature when you upgrade to Webmaster Pro.  We now have filters to ensure you only get critical failures and not false alarms.

Tip 6:  Want to schedule some tweets?  Here’s a great way to do that using Cronless.

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Tip: Cronless Can Schedule Tweets

Monday, November 16th, 2009

I found a great service called ScheduledTweets that works perfectly with Cronless–a scheduling service for your Twitter account.

Some info from the site:

—————

ScheduledTweets is built with PHP, uses MySQL to store the data & its interface is fully Ajaxed.

It enables you to define time-intervals which your tweets will be sent every x minutes. You can enter unlimited tweets, drag’n drop your tweets to change the order they will be sent.

Also, URL shortening service TinyURL is integrated for shorter tweets.

ScheduledTweets comes with a web-based friendly installer that helps you define database & Twitter information easily.

Why Use ScheduledTweets?

Twitter is both an instant messaging & a micro-blogging platform. You will probably not schedule your personal tweets (I won’t, as it clearly becomes meaningless) but if you are regularly sharing stuff on a subject, then it has the same benefit as scheduling a post on a blog.

Installation couldn’t be simpler:

  • Create a MySQL database & user
  • After downloading it, unzip the files to a folder & upload them to your hosting account
  • Run http://www.yourdomainname.com/scheduled-tweets-url/index.php
  • Define the MySQL database information you created in the first step. Also define your Twitter info and desired ScheduledTweets admin info
  • Click install
  • Setup a cron job to http://www.yourdomainname.com/inc/functions.php?getAction=cronTweet (the interval must be lower than your smallest interval defined in ScheduledTweets)
  • Click “Start ScheduledTweets” button at the top menu
  • That’s it

—————

I personally recommend using Cronless’ free cron jobs to schedule those tweets!  ;)

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PHP Tip: How to Backup Your Database

Wednesday, November 11th, 2009

Here’s an easy script to use to backup your database.  Copy the contents of this script on your site as DBBackup.php and then you can create a PHP Cron Job to run it from here, once a day!

<?
// Run until complete
set_timeout_length(0);

// DB connection parameters
$host = ‘localhost’; //enter YOUR server
$username = ‘username’; //enter YOUR username
$password = ‘password’; //change to YOUR password
$database = ‘database_name’; //update with your DB
$path = ‘/home/username/backups/’; //Your backup directory (must be writable!)

$filename = $database.‘_’.date(‘Y-m-d_H:i:s’).‘.gz’;
$backup = $path.$filename;

$backup_command = “mysqldump –opt -h $host -u $username -p $password $database | gzip > $backup”;

if(exec($backup_command)==” && file_exists($backup))
{
echo “Backup successfully executed”;
}
else
{
echo “Error creating backup”;
}
?>

There are more sophisticated ways to backup your database, one table at a time such as described in this article, but they haven’t been moved to PHP5 yet so I would suggest this for advanced users only.

A great way to use your free cron jobs.

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