Running cron shells

Another typical scenario to use CakePHP console shells is to implement a data warehouse and a time-intensive and recurring task.

In this recipe, we'll create a recurring job to calculate our package ratings, based on some complex logic.

Getting ready

For this recipe, we'll assume that you have a packages table and the related model that we created in our previous recipe. However, we'll also add a new column to store our ratings per package with the following SQL statement:

ALTER TABLE packages ADD rating INT(20) UNSIGNED NOT NULL DEFAULT '0';

How to do it...

Perform the following steps:

1. First, create a file named RatingShell.php in app/Console/Command/ with the following content:

   <?php
   App::uses('AppShell', 'Console/Command');
   
   class RatingShell extends AppShell {
   
     public function main() {
       $this->out($this->getOptionParser()->help());
     }
   
     public function getOptionParser() {
       $parser = parent::getOptionParser();
       return $parser->description('Rating...