I am currently working on a site that requires periodic download of data from other sites. For this I have been trying to find some way to make the server automatically download the data every few hours.

Any suggestions on how I might get started? Right now we have to do it via a small desktop application I wrote which executes the script every hour.

Hello Sid!

I don't think there's a way to accomplish this with pure PHP. If cron is available on the server (if it's a unix/linux system, or task scheduler if it's Windows), that's probably the way to go.

I hope this helps!
-G

Thanks Gromit, this is exactly the kind of information I was looking for.

EDIT: Just checked that my host does provide me with cron. I'll just pass it the script!

Thanks! You're a life saver!!

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