PHP - Wget And Php Help

Hi guys,

Periodically I have a need to execute some local PHP file to clean/update the DB - it takes some parameters.

So I use a Cron file, that has WGET statments passing arguments in the URL.

The benefit of this is to me is, I can manually via the browser execute the same file.

I have been told that using PHP CLI is more efficient,

Can anyone shed any light on this? Is it more efficient? Would i be able to manually excecute the PHP CLI file via a browser?

Thanks for your thoughts in advance.

 

I'm trying to get a php script working to download the latest CNN news podcast each hour.  CNN names the file based on the year, month, day, and time.

Here's what I'm trying:

Code: [Select]
<?php
$year = date('Y');
$month = date('m');
$day = date('d');
$now = date('Y-m-d-h');
$hour = date('gA');
$hourplus1 = ($hour + 1);
$hourminus1 = ($hour - 1);
$ampm = date('A');

$url = "http://podcasts.cnn.net/cnn/services/podcasting/newscast/" . "audio/" . "$year" . "/" . "$month" . "/" . "$day" . "/CNN-News-" . "$month" . "-" . "$day" . "-" . "$year" . "-" . "$hourplus1" . "$ampm" . ".mp3";

echo $url;
echo system('wget "$url"');
?>

When running from the shell, I get an "http://: invalid hostname" error.  The echo of $url looks right...but it won't run from shell.

Any ideas?