CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phpcron
user423911
user423911

Reputation: 1

how to set cron through php script?

i have 10 users. and i want to set a cron for that 10 users. Now when a perticular user logged in he can set the corn time from his panel and cron will run at that time .Also when new user added a new cron will be set for that user with default time according to application.

how can i achieve this?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 1172

Answers (3)

ChrisR
ChrisR

Reputation: 14447

As thomasmalt said this is probably not wise to do in a public system ... you don't want to let users mess with system crons.

I suggest you let the users specify a time of day in their controlpanel and have a cron script run every minute. In that script it's easy enough to fetch the users that match the current time and execute their script. It achieves the same thing, is a little more verbose and more to code but alot more secure.

Upvotes: 0

phirschybar
phirschybar

Reputation: 8579

I agree with thomasmalt that it is not wise but what you should do instead is have it so your users can set a cron time in a 'users' database table (like mysql) with columns: 'interval (INT)' and 'last_update (DATETIME)'. So every user has their own time set. Then you decide what is the lowest increment you will allow (such as 1 minute) and only let your users set times higher than that.

Then you run a cron every 1 minute which checks the 'users' table. Find any users where interval is less than or equal to the time since 'last_update'. Then run your actions for those users. This effectively does the same thing as setting crons for every user.

Upvotes: 2

thomasmalt
thomasmalt

Reputation: 1752

This sounds generally like a very unwise thing to do, but if you know what you're doing and understand the security problems involved etc. I would suggest solving this using two scripts

  • one php part which lets the user view his crontab and manipulate time settings using an html form and storing the wanted changes in a known place on your system.
  • one shell script part running as a trusted user on your system picking up the changes at a given interval (once a minute maybe) and doing the actual updates to cron.

Adding stuff to cron is potentially a very dangerous thing and only very trusted users should be allowed to do so. Any web solution should be regarded as insecure and you should take extra care to make sure any input is properly audited.

Upvotes: 0

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