Here is a very simple bootstrapper file that you can use to directly run your CodeIgniter controllers from the commandline. It’s a very easy and elegant solution for using CI controllers for cron jobs. It also logs the date/time and output each time it runs.

Download

Please let me know if you find this useful, or have an idea of how to improve this further.

Example:

The default logfile is cron.log, but you can change that with the—log-file switch. It does not show the output by default, but you can force it to using the -S or—show-output switch.

Nice
I’ll let you know if I write any improvements.
-Matt

Hi, I’m a bit new to all this, but I need cron to set up an autoresponder, and this looks like a great way of doing it. Where should I put this file in my CI setup, or does it go in the root of the domain?
Thanks.

For security you should put it anywhere outside of your document root (you don’t want web users to be able to access it). Then to get it working all you have to do is:

1) Set the CRON_CI_INDEX constant to the location of your CodeIgniter index.php file
2) Make this file executable (chmod a+x cron.php)

Then you can run it directly (./cron.php [parameters]), and if you get a “missing PHP interpreter^M” error convert your line breaks to UNIX format (see http://www.tech-recipes.com/unix_tips200.html). The instructions on the Wiki are pretty clear.

Severity: Notice —> Use of undefined constant CRON_FLUSH_BUFFERS - assumed ‘CRON_FLUSH_BUFFERS’ .../cron.php 86

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And thanx Jonathon Hill for this solution!

BDT - 17 November 2008 12:50 PM

And thanx Jonathon Hill for this solution!

Glad you found it helpful!

Jonathan, I just pulled your bootstrapper into my app and really like it. The main reason I like it is because I can use this one file to control all of my different cron jobs. I have one question though. For some reason, everything dies after the following is called:

It never gets to the point of actually writing to the log files, as that code is just below. I have no exits or die statements in the called script, and my script runs just fine and produces the correct output. Any thoughts on why this could be happening?

Also, I updated a few things that may be of use to others:

I have a switch statement in my /system/application/config/config.php file that checks to see what server I’m on so that certain machine specific settings are set. So, I added a server switch so you can run:

The code I added for this is:

I also updated the $CI_Root so that it would be server-independent (note the the bootstrap file lives in a scripts directory at the same level as application).

Thanks electromute for the—server idea! I have added it to the script along with a credit.

If you’re getting errors at this line:

Then you must not have the CRON_CI_INDEX constant set correctly. It has to be set to the exact full absolute server path and filename of your CI app’s main index.php file. include() and require() don’t work the same way when called from the command line as they do when called in a web page.

BTW I’ve updated the wiki page with a minor code update and some installation and troubleshooting information.

Thanks, Jonathan.

Yes, I had the path to my index.php fine, my cron was running and the script was executing just fine.

But I did have an “exit” hiding in the remap function (like so). I don’t use the remap very much so I kind of ignored it a bit.

(bad, bad exit!)

Ok, New Year’s resolution is to use die(“some indication that it died”); rather than silent exits.

—ingrid

awe man right when i was going to roll up my sleeves and figure out how the hell i was going to do this you come along and solve all my problems…. back to being lazy

thanks again man this is awesome

2) Make this file executable (chmod a+x cron.php)

How do you make it executable? Do you need SSH/Telnet or something?

thanks

gh0st - 11 February 2009 03:31 PM

2) Make this file executable (chmod a+x cron.php)

How do you make it executable? Do you need SSH/Telnet or something?

thanks

Yes, chmod a+x cron.php is the command to run via a console interface. If this file is on a remote server, you’ll want to ssh and run this. You can sometimes also do this through your FTP program—some of them have options to change file permissions through their interface.

If you are on your own computer, you can usually fire up a console (Cygwin for windows or native on MacOS).

Hope that helps!

this worked perfectly!  great job!

thank you SO MUCH.

Hi for all. I am tryibg to do work the boostrapper but I have a problem. When I execute by cronjob (code) in output it shows the 404 error. Why? The controller name and the function (code 2) is correct.

In my config file (code 3) I omit the index.php - maybe this is the problem?

I get the following errors.

I renamed the cron.php bootstrapper to ci_cron.php

I renamed the CI bootstap file to ci.php because I’m only using something else for my main site.

My system folder is not in the public folder (www) but sits one level up outside of web root.

# Output from shell prompt;

someuser@somehost [~/www]# php ~/mycronjobs/ci_cron.php—run=/ci.php/cron/run/—show-output

Warning: chdir(): No such file or directory (errno 2) in /path/to/mycronjobs/ci_cron.php on line 110

Warning: require(/path/to/system/www/ci.php): failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /path/to/mycronjobs/ci_cron.php on line 111

Fatal error: require(): Failed opening required ‘/path/to/system/www/ci.php’ (include_path=’.:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php’) in /path/to/mycronjobs/ci_cron.php on line 111

I figured it out—I set the path to the ci.php file incorrectly!  It should be /path/to/www/ci.php and not /path/to/system/www/ci.php!

Thanks