I would like to make a system that will automaticly update some varables in my database at midnight.

You can write a (PHP) script to do that and then just add a cron job to run it everyday at midnight.

Thank you very much. My friend will make me one soon but now I have another question.
When the 'cron job' tells my website to update I want to make sure that it's the cron job doing it and not anyone else so I plan on making the scrip say this..

$authentication = Get var along with cronjob
if ( ! $authentication="password" ) {

echo "You are not allowed here"

} else {

rest of scrip

}

The last time I set up a cron job was probably over a year ago, so I am a bit rusty with the information and I had to look up a few things on PHP CLI before my reply.

Using your example PHP script above, I would re-write it a bit:


Now, for your cron job, you could simply put:

/usr/local/bin/php -f /home/snapple/public_html/mycron.php authentication=your_secret_pass

Try it and let me know how you get along...

hey. it's been like a year... and i'm still working on this cron job, haha. I can't figure out my path for the command line

What exactly do you mean?

Actually it's fixed now. I had the path right but not something else. Now I need to see if I can get that autherisation code to work.

EDIT:
it doens't work. the script
if ( isset($_REQUEST['authentication']) and $_REQUEST['authentication']=='your_secret_pass' ) ...

doesn't get anything from the cron job command
... authentication=your_secret_pass

please help asap

does anyone have any idea?

Does it work when you don't ask for authorization?

crystalattice asked a very good question.

Do you absolutely NEED to have this authorisation? What do I mean by this? You can also move this script up and away from your web root, so it is not possible for anyone to get to it.

If that is all that you want, i.e. no one accessing / processing the page, than I recommend this instead.

For example, all the PHP scripts on my network of sites that produce the Google Sitemaps are above the web root.


With the proper permissions set for this file, no one will be able to "run" this script except yourself via the cronjob.