Question

Assuming I’m a big Unix rookie:

• I’m running a curl request through cron every 15 minutes.

• Curl basically is used to load a web page (PHP) that given some arguments, acts as a script like:

  curl http://example.com/?update_=1
  

What I would like to achieve is to run another "script" using this curl technique,

• every time the other script is run
• before the other script is run

I have read that curl accepts multiple URLs in one command, but I’m unsure if this would process the URLs sequentially or in "parallel".

Answer 1

It would most likely process them sequentially (why not just test it). But you can also do this:

1. make a file called curlrequests.sh

2. put it in a file like thus:

   curl http://example.com/?update_=1
   curl http://example.com/?update_=3
   curl http://example.com/?update_=234
   curl http://example.com/?update_=65
   

3. save the file and make it executable with chmod:

   chmod +x curlrequests.sh
   

4. run your file:

   ./curlrequests.sh
   

or

   /path/to/file/curlrequests.sh

As a side note, you can chain requests with &&, like this:

   curl http://example.com/?update_=1 && curl http://example.com/?update_=2 && curl http://example.com?update_=3`

And execute in parallel using &:

   curl http://example.com/?update_=1 & curl http://example.com/?update_=2 & curl http://example.com/?update_=3