Question

I am building a Drupal 6 module for a client and I want to execute some part of code every XYZ minutes. I know I can implement the cron_hook, but my module has no control over the client’s cron. I need to run my code irrespective of cron setting. Any ideas on how to approach this?

Answer 1

Drupal doesnt really offer anything beyond the hook_cron functionality.

However, what you can do is define a normal menu callback that executes whatever aribitarary code you want to run. Just set up the job manually in your server’s cron-tab to fire it whenever you want

<?
function example_menu() {

    $items = array();
    $items['example/cron'] = array(
        'title' => 'example Cron',
        'page callback' => 'example_callback',
        'type' => MENU_CALLBACK,
    );

}

function example_callback(){
      //optionally do some IP checking to make sure its not being fired by a remote request

      set_time_limit(0); //set it so your cron wont time out if it takes a long time to process ... be careful your cron doesnt run forever though

      watchdog('example', "Cron Started", array(), WATCHDOG_NOTICE);
      //execute custom code here
      for($i = 0; $i < 100; $i++){
         //do stuff
      }

      watchdog('example', "Cron Complete", array(), WATCHDOG_NOTICE);

    }

Once you have that, just set up a cron job to hit the url however often you want

X Y * * * curl http://examplesite.com/example/cron