How can I create some specific content with a cron job

Question

I need to create a specific content, for instance, a Page, every 15 days.

Of course that goes into some cron job.

But how can I do that? Do I need to implement the hook_cron at my .module?

Answer 1

You got it! Implement hook_cron and inside that function create a node using the node_save().

Each time you run cron by going to /cron.php or each time it is called from your cron job, your hook will automatically be called.

Here's some sample code, partly borrowed from http://drupal.org/node/1111514

So your .module file should at least have the following,

// Implementation of hook_cron
mymodule_cron {

  // add node properties
  $newNode = (object) NULL;
  $newNode->type = '{NODE_TYPE}';
  $newNode->title = '{NODE_TITLE}'
  $newNode->uid = {USER_ID};
  $newNode->created = strtotime("now");
  $newNode->changed = strtotime("now");
  $newNode->status = 1;
  $newNode->comment = 0;
  $newNode->promote = 0;
  $newNode->moderate = 0;
  $newNode->sticky = 0;

  // add fields
  $newNode->field_{YOUR_CUSTOM_FIELD_1}[0]['value'] = '{DATA_1}';
  $newNode->field_{YOUR_CUSTOM_FIELD_2}[0]['value'] = '{DATA_2}';

  // save node
  node_save($newNode);
  }

After you enable your new module, just run cron by hand (go to /cron.php) and test it out to see if your node was created!