Frequently Asked Questions

-What is the time displayed above the menu ?
The time above the menu is the UTC time, used by cronjobs to schedule and execute the tasks

-Do you use a time server ?
Yes, cronjob's clock is synchronized every hour with a time server.

-What is the response time ?
It is the time needed to open the socket and if your task downloads more than 0 octet it also include the time needed to download the answer to the request.

-What happens if your server is down ?
When the server restarts the tasks that should have been executed are executed once (even if during downtime they should have been executed several times) then the schedule runs as if nothing happened.
We believe this behaviour is better that the usual "cron" one, since a monthly scheduled task will still be executed (with some delay) even if the server is down at the scheduled execution time. Also the task is only executed once to avoid an overload at server restart time. If you have special needs, let us know.

-How do I know if my task failed ?
If cronjobs did not manage to open a socket to your task's URL, then the result of the task is "ERROR".
You can therefore use the regular expression "/^ERROR$/" as a condition for notification or forward.
Be careful if your task only downloads 0,10 or 100 octets, then it is possible to test the connexion to ".com", ".net" and".org" domains only. Other domains won't have "ERROR" result but a redirection page... it is therefore necessary to download at least 1Ko so that cronjobs can recognize this redirection page and replace it by "ERROR".

-How do I use the regular expression in condition and extraction text fields ?
You'll find a description of the Perl Compatibles Regular Expressions here.
Said briefly if the condition PCRE matches the result of your task, the action or notification is triggered and the text in the result that matches the full pattern of the extraction PCRE is sent.
More technically, the expression in the condition text field is used as the "pattern" parameter of the preg_match PHP function (the "subject" parameter being the unmodified result of your task) to determine if the action or notification has to be performed.
If the notification or action is triggered, the expression in the extraction text field is used as the "pattern" parameter of the preg_match PHP function (the "subject" parameter being the unmodified result of your task) and the result of the extraction filter is the first element of the "matches" parameter (namely $matches[0]).