Question

I have a flash application. I’m trying to send users text messages via php after they did certain things on the flash.

For example,

• Text user 1 hour after they did
  thing#1.
• Text user 10 minutes after they did
  thing#2.
• Text user 1 day after they did
  thing#3.

….

I’m thinking of setting up a table for the list of things that will trigger the text. Then have a cron job set up to check the timestamps of each user finishing those things.

Is there a better way out there for doing this?

Answer 1

That sounds like the approach I would take. Whenever you have an action that takes place at a different time than the web request, you need to “queue” that action up to be completed later. Then you need a script that runs (however often you want) that checks the queue (i.e. DB table) and processes the items in the queue.

You’re on the right track.