Power Serach, Template Data Feed, Cron Jobs and Plesk

[wcw]

Re: Power Serach, Template Data Feed, Cron Jobs and Plesk

I'm not aware of any command line web request engine that will honor javascript refreshes or meta refreshes. Probably the only reliable way to accomplish a refresh of that nature would be for the module to output absolutely nothing when called in cron job mode and then issue an http header 301 redirect to the next screen when it nears the timeout; command line browsers do tend to honor redirects issued at the http level.

Thank you David. This worked like a charm. It took a couple hours to work through the code in the Template Data Feed, but as best I can tell, it is working fine. I've run a few tests and will run a few more before writing up how it is done. With this technique, the TDF should be able to export an unlimited number of records without timing out using cron. Course a store could still run into the lost connection issue which happens on some servers. The next project is to get the Power Search module doing the mirror rebuild using cron and not timing out.

[ILoveHostasaurus]

Re: Power Serach, Template Data Feed, Cron Jobs and Plesk

That sounds awesome; glad I could help.

[wcw]

Re: Power Serach, Template Data Feed, Cron Jobs and Plesk

Since you are in the in-crowd now, do you think there would be any server issues, e.g. too many connections, because you are not really closing the page until the last record exports (or are you).

[ILoveHostasaurus]

Re: Power Serach, Template Data Feed, Cron Jobs and Plesk

The page effectively closes after each redirect since the browser is being told hey, the content you requested is over <here> at this new URL, so it then closes what it just requested and requests the next thing. Database connections should not be an issue because your module would be opening one, doing its work, issuing the redirect, exiting and closing; then the next request comes in, it uses the URL parameters to determine where it needs to start and finish its work, repeat.

[wcw]

Re: Power Serach, Template Data Feed, Cron Jobs and Plesk

This sounds good. Course the proof is in the pudding. Hopefully a couple of those huge stores, who've been running the TDF export without cron because of the timeout issue, will give this new method a try.

When running this method through a browser, it is misleading and you feel like nothing is happening. The screen just sits there blank until it is done. At the end it displays a simple message that it is done.

[ILoveHostasaurus]

Re: Power Serach, Template Data Feed, Cron Jobs and Plesk

We have a customer who's trying this new way of doing it but it doesn't seem to be working. Is there something I can look at to see if it has worked or where it's getting stuck? Something in the db I can empty out, rebuild, then see if new data is there?

[wcw]

Re: Power Serach, Template Data Feed, Cron Jobs and Plesk

I've asked he continue to do manual rebuilds until I get back from vacation (Oct 31). Probably his issue has to do with short links, but can't tell without a lot of online time.