IS PHP Cron the right one for checking and notifying bidding winner?

Question

I am being asked by my client for making instant notification to the bid winner when the bid expires.

Since the ending time is varying and set by users while registering bids, I am planning of setting cron jobs to run every 5 mins and check any finished bids without notification and notify all of them.

Do i have another good method to accomplish this task?

Answer 1

I would look into something for queueing tasks. Me personally... I would use Celery, because I love Python and Celery is freaking awesome.

If you are married to, or have to use PHP, then beanstalk looks promising.

Answer 2

Instead of cron jobs, I prefer it integrate the job listings into my MVC. That way, upon every request it can check to see what jobs need to be preformed. Then I have a cron job call any link to my MVC so that jobs can be completed without the need of a request being sent.

Thats just me, you might be able to find a better alternative to fit your site.