Passing $_GET parameters to cron job

Not a direct answer to your question but a better solution I think:

If you want nobody except cron to run the script, just place it outside the web-root. That way there is no access via the web-server at all.

If you do need to run the command as a special user as well, don't use GET but have a user login and check for a logged-in session (a certain set session variable...) and include the script in that page only.

Your publicly accessible script would look something like:

session_start();

if (isset($_SESSION['user']))
{
  include '/path/to/script/outside/of/web-root';
}
else
{
  die('No access.');
}

The $_GET[] & $_POST[] associative arrays are only initialized when your script is invoked via a web server. When invoked via the command line, parameters are passed in the $argv array, just like C.

Contains an array of all the arguments passed to the script when running from the command line.

Your command would be:

* 3 * * * /path_to_script/cronjob.php username=test password=test code=1234 

You would then use parse_str() to set and access the paramaters:

<?php

var_dump($argv);

/*
array(4) {
  [0]=>
  string(27) "/path_to_script/cronjob.php"
  [1]=>
  string(13) "username=test"
  [2]=>
  string(13) "password=test"
  [3]=>
  string(9) "code=1234"
}
*/

parse_str($argv[3], $params);

echo $params['code']; // 1234