Cron Job Example with PuTTy - CodeOfaNinja

Last Update: May 29, 2018•Date Posted: August 11, 2012•by Mike Dalisay➜Get
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Today we are going to run a PHP script on schedule, in other words, this PHP
script should be executed in certain period of time.
This could be any script you want, it can be used to send email to your users,
make changes to your le system or database, crawl a website, etc.

Running a script on schedule has a lot of bene ts because it does the job
automatically, without you worrying about it.

Execute a program via command line

We’re gonna be able to achive this using:

1. PuTTy - a secure shell or terminal emulator used to access remote systems

over the internet.
2. Cron - the time based job scheduler in unix-like operating systems which
powers most servers today.
3. cURL – a command line tool for getting and sending les using URL syntax.
This is usually installed already in your server.

You can skip step 1, 2 and 3 if you know how to log in using PuTTy.

Step 1
If you don’t have PuTTy in your computer, you can download it here, choose
putty.exe if you’re on windows.
Step 2
Run putty.exe, it will look like this:
 Arrow # 1 is where you’re gonna put your host name or IP address of your
server.
Arrow # 2 is the button you’re gonna click (or you can simply press enter)
immediately after entering your server host name of IP address.

Step 3
You’ll be asked to enter your server username and password. It looks like this:
Step 4
You should be in the crontab, type: crontab -e and press enter. By the way, a
crontab is a simple text le in your server with a list of commands meant to be
run at speci ed times, more info here.

It will list the the cron jobs (not yet editable)

Step 5
To make it editable, you should press the “insert” button on your keyboard.

Now you can edit your cron jobs or schedules, there are so many tutorials on
how to construct a cron job, you can nd some here and here.
On my example above, the cron runs two php script every one minute via cURL.
A brief explanation:

#  MIN  HOUR  MDAY  MON  DOW  COMMAND

*/1   *   *   *   *   curl http://mydomain.com/myphp_script.php

MIN – Minute 0-60

HOUR - Hour [24-hour clock] 0-23
MDAY - Day of Month 1-31
MON - Month 1-12 OR jan,feb,mar,apr…
DOW - Day Of Week 0-6 OR sun,mon,tue,wed,thu,fri,sat
COMMAND - Command to be run Any valid command-line

Step 6
After you’re done editing, press the “Esc” key on your keyboard to exit from the
edit mode. It will again look like this:

Step 7
To exit cron tab, you should type: :wq and press enter.
Then it will look like this:

That’s it! Our PHP scripts will be executed every one minute!

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