Topic: Windows alternative for Cron Jobs

[chrisdburns]

So my home server runs on a windows xp machine (it's used for a lot more than a web server) and therefore doesn't have cron jobs available.  (At least not the popular linux one).

What is a reliable and free (oxymoron?) solution to run cron jobs on a windows machine?  (mainly looking for actual opinions, I know google exists and have used it and formed a list of options, just looking for opinions from those who have worked with them)

[thorpe]

There is such a thing as scheduler built right into windows. Should be in control panel somewhere.

[tibberous]

Is scheduler the most reliable?

[chrisdburns]

That is true, but it won't do what I need. 

All I need is to somehow automate the running of a php script every 30 seconds (1 min if necessary).  Right now all I've found is a way to schedule firefox.exe to run and just set it's homepage to the script.  That feels very wrong tool for the job ish.  Plus I wouldn't know how to close the window aftwards.

Any ideas?

(note:  I don't need a browser window opened or anything as there is no html output from the script.  It just needs to run somehow.)

[neylitalo]

Use the php binary. Should be somewhere in your PHP installation directory.

[chrisdburns]

Alright I figured it out finally.  I can just run the script via command prompt.  Just had set the include path properly.

To those curious about how to use command prompt:

Code: [Select]

c:\xampp\htdocs\php\php.exe c:\xampp\htdocs\test\test1\test.php
(if you use include or require in your scripts, use ini_set to set the include path, I had to at least)

Code: [Select]

ini_set('include_path', 'c:/xampp/htdocs/test/test1');

[corbin]

Or you can set the 'start in' path and not have to set the include path.

[ardyandkari]

interesting, how does this run the script automatically every so often like a cron?

[chrisdburns]

interesting, how does this run the script automatically every so often like a cron?

I used the built in windows scheduler to run the command mentioned above to repeat every 1 min for 24 hours everyday.