PHP - check json value after one hour

Question

I have created a function, which get twitter count using json.

But, I want to recheck it agian after some time, like an hour. But currently it checks every time when a page loads. and which effect page loading time.

there is already a PHP function which do exactly what i want, but I cant remember it, I just remember that the function start from tr....

Here is my function, which check twitter follower :

function follower( $tw ) {      
    $tw =  @json_decode(file_get_contents('http://api.twitter.com/1/users/show.json?screen_name='.$tw));
    $tw_followers = number_format($tw->followers_count); 

    return $tw_followers;
}

EDIT:

I found that PHP function:

set_transient('follower', $tw_followers, 60*60*24);

please guide me if I am wrong

Answer 1

I would recommend you to make use of cron jobs if you are using a Unix server or Windows Task Scheduler in the case of windows.

Like this you will be able to use programmed tasks.

For windows here's a tutorial apported by @Chris Cooney: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/how-to-automate-windows-programs-on-a-schedule/

In the case of using cron you could do it easily like this to check it every hour:

0 * * * *  php -f your_relative_or_full_path_URL/params > /dev/null 

To avoid anyone to execute the code by URL, you could something like this.