Run an indefinite PHP script for an hour. Restart every hour - php

Question

I wrote a PHP script to pull tweets from the Twitter firehose and store them into a database. Ideally I want to just let it run so that it collects tweets over time, thus, it's wrapped in a while(1) loop.
This seems to be problematic because it's timing out. If I just run it in a browser, it won't run for more than 30 seconds before timing out and giving me a 324 Error.
Question: Is there a way that I can have it run for a certain amount of time (20 seconds), auto kill itself, then restart? All in a cron job (PS...I don't know how to write a cron job)?
Background: Site hosted on Godaddy. Would ideally like to run this on my hosting server there.
The Script:
<?php
$start = time();
$expAddress = "HOSTNAME";
$expUser = "USERNAME";
$expPwd = "PASSWORD";
$database = "DBNAME";
$opts = array(
'http' => array(
'method' => "POST",
'content' => 'keywords,go,here',
)
);
// Open connection to stream
$db = mysql_connect($expAddress, $expUser, $expPwd);
mysql_select_db($database, $db);
$context = stream_context_create($opts);
while (1) {
$instream = fopen('https://USERNAME:PASSWORD#stream.twitter.com/1/statuses/filter.json','r' ,false, $context);
while(! feof($instream)) {
if(time() - $start > 5) { // break after 5 seconds
break;
}
if(! ($line = stream_get_line($instream, 100000, "\n"))) {
continue;
}
else {
$tweet = json_decode($line);
// Clean before storing
// LOTS OF VARIABLES FOR BELOW...REMOVED FOR READABILITY
// Send to database
$ok = mysql_query("INSERT INTO tweets
(created_at, from_user, from_user_id, latitude, longitude, tweet_id, language_code,
place_name, profile_img_url, source, text, retweet_count, followers_count,
friends_count, listed_count, favorites_count)
VALUES
(NOW(), '$from_user', '$from_user_id', '$latitude', '$longitude', '$tweet_id', '$language_code',
'$place_name', '$profile_img_url', '$source', '$text', '$retweet_count', '$followers_count',
'$friends_count', '$listed_count', '$favorites_count')");
if (!$ok) { echo "Mysql Error: ".mysql_error(); }
flush();
}
}
}
?>

Answer 1

You can have cron jobs run once a minute.
To do this follow these steps:
Make a script that runs your PHP code, for example:
#!/bin/bash
wget myurl.com/blah > /dev/null
Save it as my-cron.sh in some folder (like /var)
Add it to cron. Run crontab -e See Cron Format and Crontab usage.
This for example, will run it once a minute.
# Minute Hour Day of Month Month Day of Week Command
* * * * * /var/my-cron.sh

Answer 2

If I get well your need, the best thing for you is to use cron job making a script run indefinitely will not be a good idea.
As specifier in one of you comments you are using a hosting server Godaddy so probably you will not be able to have shell access, BUT depending on your cPanel version you may be able to create and define cron job.
see this link and this google search
Perhaps, if you don't have this option and you are wiling to let a browser opened I would suggest the following
create an html page as a client which would make an ajax request every hours to your PHP script, like this you emulate a cron job function
the ajax request code might look like (using jQuery)
function makeRequest(){
$.ajax({
url: "http://yourhost/url-to-your-script.php",
complete: function(data){
setTimeout(function(){
makeRequest();
}, 60 * 60 * 1000); // Minutes * Seconds * MS
}
});
}
makeRequest();
I hope this helps
EDIT
this link might help too
IMPORTANT DO NOT FORGET TO REMOVE THE INFINITE LOOP

Answer 3

I just had same issue.
Only cron job can do if you want run script off browser. You can set up cron job with free providers or you can set up cron job in windows's Scheduled tasks.
If your site has a good traffic then you can follow the option below that your users does the work for you.
In php you can find time in hour and seconds
$time= date(' H:i:s');
create a table to track if the code was run.
eg; table column name check with option 0 and 1;
select check from table.
enter code here
if ($minute > 59)
{
if($check==0)
{
run your code
then update the table each time when it was run
eg; update table set check='1'
}
}
then another if condition to reset your code
if(minute>0 && minute <1)
{
select check from your table.
if(check==1)
{
update table set check='0'
}
}