Scheduling a Web Page to Open (and Close) on a Win 2003 Server

[Renners]

I'm in the process of moving one of my sites to a dedicated server from a reseller account thus giving me more control In my reseller account I used to use the traffic hitting a page to run a mailing list by running the script if it had not run yet. I did this as I'm tight and didn't want to pay the monthly charge the WPP raised for scheduling jobs.

However now I've got control of the server I can schedule a job to run every night to do this task, the issue is what is the best way to run this task on a Win 2003 server.

The task to be run is a email reminder service that selects the relevant recipients from a database list and then constructs and sends the email using Aspmail

As all the script is already in an asp page I figured the easiest way is to open up IE and load the page and then close it although my initial attempts can only open the page thus I'll end up with loads of IE pages open on the server.

Can any one out there suggest a way to do it that may be more eliquent! or suggest a way to close the page once the script completes.

Thanks,
Renners

[moredial]

Ask your host.

Isn't there the equivalent of a cron job on windows servers?

[Barry]

I cant remember quite how I have it as I am a dufus but I have my tasks set up with the windows 'schedule task' application and call my php scripts via the command prompt as they dont time out and its closes when it finishes.

Ta

[jonsp]

Hi,
The easiest way would be to write a windows script host (.vbs) script then schedule it with task scheduler. If you can start with ASP VB Script page that does what you need just remove all the server calls ie server.createobject and obviously anything that sends output to the screen - response.write etc save with a .vbs extension. To test it locate the file in Windows Explorer and doube click it - whatever you want to happen should happen.

Once the script works fire up Task Scheduler on your serverand schedule the script to run as needed.

Cheers,
Jon

[Renners]

Originally Posted by jonsp ...remove all the server calls ie server.createobject ...save with a .vbs extension. To test it locate the file in Windows Explorer and doube click it - whatever you want to happen should happen.

Jon, thanks for the suggestion, not being a expert on application programming what would i convert the server calls into as I need to interrogate the db for the records to be used and then create a server mail object (as ASPMail states you do) to email out .

[eymedia]

Hi,

Just change Server.CreateObject to CreateObject

:-)

[Renners]

Originally Posted by eymedia Hi, Just change Server.CreateObject to CreateObject :-)

now that deserves a D'oh