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Hey,

Can someone explain to me a bit about what a cron job does?

It seems to be a scheduled task on a unix server.

Now - can a cron job be scheduled on a server by anyone? I am a developer and there is an IT department managing the server at my clients business - but they are expecting me to schedule the cron jobs to perform certain tasks.

I can't upload a joomla component - they have too. So I don't quite understand how I am supposed to start scheduling cron jobs to handle server tasks?

Or am I blowing the task out of proportion?

Is it something that chronoforms can do?

Sorry if these sound like simpleton questions. Just having things thrown at me I don't understand.

Thanks!

Hi cb1,

You need server access to set up a classic cron job. On a commercial web host this is usually done through CPanel or Plesk. The job itself if just a link to a PHP* file that the server will run at certain times or at certain frequencies - from once a second to every third Thursday at 4:17pm

ChronoForms can't do this because Joomla! and PHP have no sense of time.

There is at least one Joomla! extension that emulates a cron job - basically it puts a little watcher on each page of the site and when the page loads it looks to see if anything has been scheduled to fire since the last check. That will work on a busy site but if you don't have many visitors it can be a bit erratic.

ChronoForms can be triggered by a cron job - pass the URL of an Extra Code box in CFv3 or an event in CFv4 (it may need to be a custom event to avoid problems with security checks on the standard Load and Submit events).

Bob

*It doesn't have to be PHP but on Joomla! it probably will be.

thanks Bob,

I was just baffled when the client threw it in my lap. Their server is buttoned down with no cpanel at their business. So since I can't really install components myself - I thought the request of me scheduling cron jobs was a little crazy.

I definitely don't want to get into emulating a cron job when it seems like it's something they can do themselves.

Thanks