ExpressionEngine Cron Plugin question
Development and Programming
I’m needing to set up a cron function to automatically ping a url at a set time interval.
Does anyone have experience setting up a cron function using EllisLab’s EE Cron plugin? The documentation isn’t great.
A little help here would go a long way. I know there are others on the boards who’ve asked similar questions.
Thanks!
Hi, Jeff - welcome to the forums!
I’m sorry this has gone for awhile without a response. Let’s see if we can help you out.
The EE Cron plugin is not a true cron. It’s code that you place in a template and that template needs to be visited for the task to trigger - which usually means a fairly high-traffic template. It will only trigger at the time increments set via the plugin.
If you want a true cron, the only way to do that is to set one up via your host. I know you can do so via cPanel, probably via Plesk (no direct experience there) - or by contacting your host.
Does that help?
Hi Lisa,
That does help a little. I’m wanting to use the plugin in conjunction with Solspace’s Import module, in order to trigger a data import. We have a fairly high-traffic homepage, so I don’t think there’d be any issues triggering the cron job. I’m just not sure how to setup the cron plugin to ping a specific url.
Hi, Jeff -
My concern here would be that a data import could be a time intensive issue; that is going to very much slow down your template while it is working - so you will impact your site visitors.
I’d recommend a real cron that goes off on a schedule in the background instead. You would need to connect it to a script that pings the URL -something your server admin might be able to help with.
Does that make sense? A true cron is likely to be a better solution here.