First copy webroot/index.php to webroot/cron_scheduler.php. Replace everything below require CORE _PATH . ‘cake’ . DS . ‘bootstrap.php’; with the following code:

   1  #
   2  # BEGIN
   3  #
   4  # This was added to webroot/cron_scheduler.php
   5  #
   6  
   7  # Check that URI was specified and that we're called from the command line (not the web)
   8  if($argc == 2 && php_sapi_name() === "cli") 
   9  {
  10  	# Set request URI
  11  	$_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] = $argv[1];
  12  	# Set user-agent, so we can do custom processing
  13  	$_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'] = 'cron';
  14  	
  15  	$Dispatcher= new Dispatcher();
  16  	$Dispatcher->dispatch($argv[1]);
  17  } 
  18  
  19  #
  20  # END
  21  #
  22  # 
  23  #

Now you can execute CakePHP from the command line with the following command:

   1  $ php cron_scheduler.php /controller/action

If you get the following error, remove the lines containing line feeds in bootstrap.php:

   1  Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at .../app/config/b
   2  ootstrap.php:48) in .../app/app_controller.php on line 46

Note that Pear’s Logging package is a lot more flexible, so I recommend you use that instead of CakePHP’s built-in logging.

Use this code to add a debug message to the CakePHP debug log:

   1  $this->log("Upload action accessed", LOG_DEBUG);

Note that using something other than LOG _DEBUG will log the message as an error.

Run the code once and you should be able to see the message in $CAKE_APP/tmp/logs/debug.log.