Making an auction script start and stop auctions at specific times.

I am building a simple auction application. I need auctions to start and end at certain times. Should the page that displays the open auctions just run a query to find all auctions where current time is after the start time and before the end time? Or would it bet be开发者_开发百科tter to have a script that sets a "active" column to True? If this is the case would I have to have some type of cronjob setup?

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No cron and no "active" column is required. Just list auctions using something like:

select *
from auctions
where
    start < now()
    and end > now()

When user is placing a bid use the following:

update auctions set
    bid = $bid,
    highest_bidder = $bidding_user_id
where
    id = $this_auction_id
    and start < now()
    and end > now()
    and bid < $bid

Then check if query has affected a row. If yes - bid is successful, current user is highest bidder. If no - bid is too low or auction has finished. You can figure out that later by fetching auction row again and checking bidder id.

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Just set a "close_time" field in the mysql table with your auction. When you add the row, populate that field with a time() + whatever to set the close_time to represent some point in the future.

Then setup a script which runs a simple query:

'UPDATE auctions_table SET active = FALSE WHERE active = TRUE AND close_time <= UNIX_TIMESTAMP()'

Save that query to a php page called something like close_active_auctions.php and set that up on a cron for once every 10 seconds or so (or however often you need).