Question

I am putting together an online radio station, and I am using Applescript to update my server with the “nowplaying” information that is ultimately coming from iTunes.
Applescript pushes that information to the server as a .html file.
That works fine, then I receive the information into my website using this line of php:

$fp = fopen ("music/rtl.txt","r"); 
if (!feof($fp) ) 
{ 
   $buffer = fgets($fp, 1024); 
   print "<tr><td align=\"center\"><b>Current Track</b>: $buffer"; 
} 
fclose ($fp);

My question is: how do I get this information to udpate automatically? Even though it is updating on the server, it will remain still until I hit refresh on the webpage.
How do I get this PHP information to refresh itself without having to manually refresh my screen? How can the Current Track information change automatically?

Answer 1

First off, on your html page, use a span with an id to indicate the spot where you want the track info to go:

//html page
<tr><td align="center"><b>Current Track</b>: <span id="currentTrack"></span>";

Then, assuming jquery is cool, use the ajax function inside a custom function, then use setInterval to run it every 5 seconds:

//script page (using jquery)
$(function(){

    setInterval(refreshTrack,5000); //  5 SECONDS

    function refreshTrack() {
        $.ajax({
                type: 'post',
                url: 'ajax.php',
                success: function(txt) {
                    $('#currentTrack').text(txt);
                }
            });
    }
});

And of course, your ajax page will look pretty much like what you’ve got, except take away the html markup, because what it spits out will go between the <span> tags:

// ajax.php
$fp = fopen ("music/rtl.txt","r"); 
if (!feof($fp) ) 
{ 
   $buffer = fgets($fp, 1024); 
   echo $buffer; 
}