Greetings all, I'm currently looking at building a web application, however I've run into an area of development I've not come across before. The web site in its basic form allows users to send cars from a point and then the car will arrive at another point. When the car is set on its way, the start time, travel duration and end time are all known and stored in a MySQL database, what I would like to happen is that an event is triggered on the server at the end time and then an e-mail is sent to the user. This should happen regardless of whether someone is browsing the website or not.
I don't believe that I'll be able to solely use PHP, I have spent the afternoon trying to look at potential solutions but I have to admit I've drawn a blank. Google hasn't been helpful (64 pages so far), as any searches related to "event handling" bring up a load of JavaScript tutorials/help for 'onclick' events etc. I have searched through the PHP documentation and found "libevent" (http://www.php.net/manual/en/book.libevent.php ), I don't believe that is what I require (although in all honesty the lack of documentation on it means I'm quite in the dark as to its purpose). Another potential candidate I came across was a PHP/Java bridge (http://php-java-bridge.sourceforge.net/pjb/ ), whereby I could use the java virtual machine, register events with it and then callback PHP scripts, although this seems extremely long winded. I was hoping that someone might have some experience with this kind of issue and could point me in the right direction. I'm sure I've missed something right in front of me. Alex.
