How to setup a CRON JOB in MAGENTO?

Question

I want to setup a CRON JOB in Magento. My requiremen-: In our shop which is built in Magento, Customers,products & tier prices are coming in.csv file which we manually importing till the time.

So now we are reading that .csv file which is where Magento is placed through PHP . We fetch that data in csv file through php & insert data in relevant tables of Magento database.

So for that I made php file which externally connected to Magento db & do the needful task of fetching & inserting data. Now how to setup CRON job so that this process will become automatic...I gone through Magento website where they mention How to setup a cron job?

http://www.magentocommerce.com/wiki/1_-_installation_and_configuration/how_to_setup_a_cron_job

but still have a plenty of doubts... So can anybody explain me how should I set up cron job so that this sample php file work & our process of fetching & inserting Customer, products, Pricing etc. become automatic ?

Plz provide me basic info. on how to setup cron job in Magento for above scenario or can we use CRON job created with the help of PHP?

http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/php/managing-cron-jobs-with-php-2/

If anyone have sample code for the same that will really help me alot...

plz guide me.

Answer 1

it's nothing specify related to Magento, which is just another php script. just set up the cron to run the appropriate script from the command line

php /path to script/script.php

Answer 2

Setting a cron in magento can be done by opening the cron tab for editing and then specifying the path:-

*/10 * * * * php -q /path/to/magento/cron.php

It will run your cron every 10 minutes.

You can check the magento admin as well and change the required thing like log clearing and all.

System > Configuration > Advanced > System > Cron (Scheduled Tasks)

Answer 3

If you are comfortable making HTTP requests from your PHP scripts on the server, SaturnAPI has a secure scheduling solution that may be suitable for you. It's a REST API. You make HTTP requests to schedule, view and delete jobs. Below is an example for scheduling a job:

curl -X POST \
  https://saturnapi.com/cron/jobs \
    -H saturnapi-access-key:'YOUR_SATURNAPI_ACCESS_KEY' \ 
    -d dateTimeUTC='2015:09:25 14:30' \
    -d dateTimeFormat='YYYY:MM:DD HH:mm' \
    -d callbackURL='https://your.verified.domain.com' \

When the time comes, the callbackURL will receive an HTTP POST. It's very simple, and there's no need to install anything on your server.

Disclosure: I worked on SaturnAPI