What is the best way to trigger an action at a certain time?

[Ben Rubinstein]

I think I may not have been very clear.

This isn't LiveCode doing anything special; just a standalone LiveCode app 
that either does something immediately on launch (and then quits), or inspects 
the command line parameters to decide what to do (and then quits).

I usually create a .bat file (on Windows) or .sh file (on Mac/Linux) to run 
the LC app with the appropriate parameters.

On Windows you run the "Task Scheduler" and create a task to run the .bat 
file, with whatever schedules you like. On Mac/Linux you edit the 'crontab' 
file adding one or more lines with the interesting syntax to execute the .sh file.

Your app can read the command line parameters (on Mac/Linux or Windows) by 
inspecting the special global variables $0, $1 etc.

The only gotcha is that on Mac, you think your app is at e.g.
  /Users/yourname/Myapp

  - but actually on Mac what appears to be an application "Myapp" is a bundle 
(i.e. a folder with a special flag so the Finder pretends it's not), and the 
path to the executable app is e.g.
  /Users/yourname/Myapp.app/Contents/MacOS/Myapp

On Linux and Windows, it's where you think it is!

Ben

On 12/07/2022 15:56, Bob Sneidar via use-livecode wrote:
> It seems to me that if you have an open socket to listen for commands, you could have the chron or windows scheduler send those commands to your LC app.
> 
> Ben, some syntax would be helpful.
> 
> Bob S
> 
> 
>> On Jul 12, 2022, at 07:48 , Ben Rubinstein via use-livecode <use-livecode at lists.runrev.com> wrote:
>>
>> Hi Tim,
>>
>> On 11/07/2022 12:35, Tim Selander via use-livecode wrote:
>>> I want to have an LC app running on a computer doing nothing but watching the time. At predetermined times, I then want it to run a command. A call to an API on a website.
>>
>> My $0.02, FWIW: it this is really all your app is doing, and the times are every fee hours or days, rather than every few seconds, I would use the computer's built in scheduler to invoke your app, rather than have it running continuously and watching the time.
>>
>> I have a number of things like this - LC apps which are launched by schedule. On Windows, the Windows scheduler (I generally use a batch script which launches the app in this case); on Mac or Linux, use cron. I find this more reliable, easier to update etc.
>>
>> Ben
> 
> 
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