CODEWITHSUNDEEP
schedulermysql5
dierre
dierre

Reputation: 7220

Is it possible to have an "internal" cron in mysql5?

The other day a friend suggested to play a web browser game called OGame. If you don't know it I'll tell you what it is:an rts game where you have to build things like mining factories, barracks and so on. The interesting thing that every building has a build time and you can log off while it's building because it will keep going.

Something like this I would believe is managed via dbms. I have my records where I have the end time of a costruction. How do I check when to update a building? Do I need an external application that checks every seconds what record needs to be updated? Is it possible with mysql5 to have an internal scheduler that launches a procedure on this table? And if so, is it a best practice?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 105

Answers (1)

Tak
Tak

Reputation: 11722

I have built a similar game and I stored the construction end times (and other events to be fired) in an events table. I wrote a PHP daemon which regularly checks the events table for expired records and acts on them accordingly.

I couldn't find a way to do it in the database itself (and if I later wanted to migrate to another DB it would need rewriting). A cron'd script may overlap. A daemon can keep track of everything all the time, and output debug information if events are queuing faster than they're being processed. I also added a cron to check periodically that my daemon is still running, otherwise start it.

Creating a daemon in PHP (if you're using PHP)

Hope that helps.

Upvotes: 2

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