For several months now I’ve been triggering functions in my CakePHP controllers using crontabs. It’s especially handy for summarizing data and sending out reports via email. I’m about to change jobs and I’m trying to set up as many systems as I can to help staff manage our data after I leave. Part of that means writing a few more crons to send out more emails. Today while trying to do just that, I ran into something unexpected that held me up for an hour or so until I had an epiphany on my way home. For the purposes of this post, I’m assuming you’ve already set up a cron dispatcher and know how to trigger cron jobs.
For one more week I’m working in a research clinic. One of the things we need to keep track of is who is late in getting us a sample. We need to check for blood and throat samples (which come from swishing some saline around in the mouth). This can be done by hand, but soon the study will grow and the number of participants will make that hard to manage. So I just want to check to see who is late and send out an email to staff to let them know.
This function exists in my Patient controller: (more…)