How can I make a cron to execute a php script? - php

Question

I want execute a php script each five minutes at my server, it is a php script which works fine alone, I tried since my browser and since console using "php -f php_file.php". But I need execute it automatically every days. I was searching on Google and here to make it but any solution worked for me:
First I edit my crontab and I also restart the cron to make sure that it was updated correctly.
*/5 * * * * /usr/bin/php /var/www/myscript.php
and I tried the following too:
*/5 * * * * /usr/bin/php -f /var/www/myscript.php
I made the script executable too, review my system log (where I can see that my cron is executing correctly, but it doesn't execute php script) and I also try to redirect the output of cron to a file, but it leaves the file empty.
Anyone can help me?
Best regards

Answer 1

You were on the right track by making your script executable.
Do it again if needed
$ chmod +x script.php
Add this to the very top of the file:
#!/usr/bin/php
<?php
// here goes your script
you can test if the script executes by running it like this
$ ./script.php
set-up your cron job like below to set-up some logging but make sure you output something from your script, use print or echo and a relevant message.
*/5 * * * * /var/www/script.php >> /var/www/script.log 2>&1
we are redirecting both standard output and errors into the script.log file.
check every 5 min for activity.
Update:
Try this in your php script
$file = '/var/www/script.txt';
for($i=0;$i<9;$i++){
$entry = date("Y-m-d H:i:s") . " " . $i . PHP_EOL;
echo $entry; // this should write to the log file
file_put_contents($file, $entry, FILE_APPEND | LOCK_EX);
// and this should write to the script.txt file
}
basically we are giving the full path to the file and passing the FILE_APPEND flag so we don't overwrite every time.
Run the script and check if the file is created, the default behavior is to create the file if it doesn't exist.