Implementing index.php that serves index.html

Question

I want a webpage to reflect a log file. I have a bash script that converts the log to html. Currently this runs periodically via crontab, which works, but obviously executions are redundant when the webpage isn't viewed. I'd like to implement a system so the bash script runs only called when the webpage is called.

I gather an index.php script along the lines:

<?php
$message=shell_exec(". /path/script.sh");
?>

.. should generate the index.html file ok. But is there an easy way to get index.php/Apache to serve that file to the client browser?

Answer 1

I suppose you could use readfile to dump the file you've just created towards the browser. Alternatively, you could issue a 302 temporary redirect to index.html.

Answer 2

I gather the best solution is to end the php with:

header('Location: index.html');
exit;

Answer 3

Another option:

Create an .htaccess file in your web server root with the following:

AddType application/x-httpd-php .htm .html

Now apache will process .htm and .html files as php documents and any <?php ... ?> tags located in that file will be interpreted as php.