Question

I am currently reading this documentation here where I want to use CRON. Now it says in the first section that I need to enter in a command: crontab -e.

Do I only need to enter this in a simple text editor file and just upload the file into the server?

I am using helios.hud.ac.uk so would this be the correct command:

* * 25 10 * helios.hud.ac.uk/u00000000/Mobile/inactivatesession.php

This will execute this php script below (inactivatesession.php):

<?php

include('connect.php');


$createDate = mktime(0,0,0,10,25,date("Y"));
$selectedDate =  date('d-m-Y', ($createDate));

$sql = "UPDATE Session SET Active = ? WHERE DATE_FORMAT(SessionDate,'%Y-%m-%d' ) <= ?";                                         
$update = $mysqli->prepare($sql);
$update->bind_param("is", 0, $selectedDate);
$update->execute();

?>

The url for this php script is: helios.hud.ac.uk/u00000000/Mobile/inactivatesession.php

I havn’t used CRON before so just need little help on it.

Thanks

Answer 1

1. You open a shell (probably through SSH) to your server
2. You run the command crontab -e
3. You edit the crontab according to your needs (if you want to run a php script over http you need to use wget)
4. You save and exit If you didn’t make any mistakes, you will get a message that crontab was updated