Sending HTTP request through cron job

Question

I have a PHP file that is deployed in a server:

/var/www/html/cron/leave_mail.php

The code inside this PHP file is just sending a request via CURL (The server of the url is the same server of the cron job):

<?php

$url = "http://my-site.build.com/sendmail/sendmail_leave";

$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, TRUE);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_NOBODY, TRUE); // remove body
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, TRUE);
$head = curl_exec($ch);

curl_close($ch);

?>

Now I created a cron job on the same server where I deployed the PHP file:

* * * * * php /var/www/html/cron/leave_mail.php

After 1 minute, it didn't execute the command inside the PHP file, however, I can see on the system logs that the cron job runs.

I run my local virtual machine with ubuntu os and created the same cron job, executing the same file. After 1 min, I can see that it executes the command inside the PHP file because the data on the database was updated.

I'm really puzzled on why the cron job on the server didn't executes the PHP command. I'm stuck on this issue.

Answer 1

Start with finding where PHP is:

which php

Then update the crontab by running the following command:

crontab -e

Then update the line with the correct PHP path:

* * * * * root /usr/bin/php /var/www/html/cron/leave_mail.php

Also note that you can specify the user before the path. Hopes this helps a little.