I am kind of confused. So pls go easy on me. Take any standard web application implemented with mvc, like codeigniter or rails. The scripts gets executed only when a browser sends request right. So when a user logs in and sends request the server recieves it and sends him response.
Now consider the scenario where apart from the regular application i also need something like a backend process. For example a script which checks whether a bidding time is closed and sends the mail to the bidder that the bidding is closed and chooses the bid winner. Now all these actions has to be done automatically as soon as the bidding time ends.
Now if this script is part of a regular app then it should be triggered by the client(browser) but i dont want that to happen. This should be like a bot script which must run on the server checking the DB for events and patterns like this.
How do i go about doing something like this. Also is this possible to have this implemented on a regular shared or dedicated hosting where we dont have shell access but only ftp access.
You'd have to write your script as a standalone program and either have it run continuously in the background or have cron (or some other scheduling service; also only works if you're only interested in time-based events) execute it for you.
There are probably hosts that have shell-less ways to do this (fancy GUI interfaces for managing background processes or something,) but your run of the mill web host with only FTP access definitely doesn't.