How to rerun a php script without loading it in a browser again?

I use WordPress. I have a php script I load into each post, via shortcode, that runs a 24 hour auction for the item in that post.

At the end of the auction I need to trigger an email function in the script which notifies the winning bidder.

I can’t depend on there being a user that will initiate a browser reload at that specific time. So I need an automatic way to do it without a browser.

I would like to programmatically create a crontab when the first person loads the page. It would simply wget the page every minute until perhaps a couple minutes after the auction ends. At which point I would programmatically delete the crontab.

Sooooo, does anyone know how to create a crontab using php??
I have tried this:

[code=php]exec(‘crontab -e * 20 * * * wget -q -O /dev/null “‘ . $url . ‘” >/dev/null 2>&1’);[/code]

But I can’t get any confirmation that it is working.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated!

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