On Mon, 2010-03-15 at 18:07 +1030, David Robley wrote: > Alex Major wrote: > > > Greetings all, > > > > I'm currently looking at building a web application, however I've run into > > an area of development I've not come across before. The web site in its > > basic form allows users to send cars from a point and then the car will > > arrive at another point. When the car is set on its way, the start time, > > travel duration and end time are all known and stored in a MySQL database, > > what I would like to happen is that an event is triggered on the server at > > the end time and then an e-mail is sent to the user. This should happen > > regardless of whether someone is browsing the website or not. > > > > I don't believe that I'll be able to solely use PHP, I have spent the > > afternoon trying to look at potential solutions but I have to admit I've > > drawn a blank. Google hasn't been helpful (64 pages so far), as any > > searches related to "event handling" bring up a load of JavaScript > > tutorials/help for 'onclick' events etc. I have searched through the PHP > > documentation and found "libevent" > > (http://www.php.net/manual/en/book.libevent.php ), I don't believe that is > > what I require (although in all honesty the lack of documentation on it > > means I'm quite in the dark as to its purpose). Another potential > > candidate I came across was a PHP/Java bridge > > (http://php-java-bridge.sourceforge.net/pjb/ ), whereby I could use the > > java virtual machine, register events with it and then callback PHP > > scripts, although this seems extremely long winded. > > > > I was hoping that someone might have some experience with this kind of > > issue and could point me in the right direction. I'm sure I've missed > > something right in front of me. > > > > Alex. > > I think what you want is something to trigger a php script every > $period-of-time; if your host supports it, cron is the means of executing > an application at regular intervals down to a minute granularity. There are > some web-based cron services also, but they may not have the same > granularity as a locally based cron. > > > Cheers > -- > David Robley > > "Wow!" barked Tom, with a bow. > Today is Prickle-Prickle, the 1st day of Discord in the YOLD 3176. > > You could store the end times in the database, and cron can run a script that will check each of these times to find any that are within x minutes that an email hasn't been sent out for. You'll need an extra field to indicate whether an email has been sent or not. Thanks, Ash http://www.ashleysheridan.co.uk
