PHP MySQL give something in time increments without cron jobs?

[motormichael12]

I have a MySQL table shown as the following (there are more fields but remover for the purpose of illustrating):

+----+-------------+--------+--------------+--------+--------------+
| id | username    | energy | energy_total | health | health_total |
+----+-------------+--------+--------------+--------+--------------+
|  1 | Opalelement |     10 |           10 |     10 |           10 |
|  2 | DougFresh   |     10 |           10 |     10 |           10 |
+----+-------------+--------+--------------+--------+--------------+

There are things you can do that take away energy, but I don't wnat to give it back all at once at any given time. What I wnat to do is maybe every 5 minutes after the last action that took some away, give one back until it is full.

My idea was to make a database structure like the following:

+----+-------------+--------+--------------+-------------+--------+--------------+-------------+
| id | username    | energy | energy_total | energy_used | health | health_total | health_used |
+----+-------------+--------+--------------+-------------+--------+--------------+-------------+
|  1 | *********** |     10 |           10 |             |     10 |           10 |             |
|  2 | *********   |     10 |           10 |             |     10 |           10 |             |
+----+-------------+--------+--------------+-------------+--------+--------------+-------------+

*_used will be a unix timestamp value
Then use a query to select the *_used fields and do "time() - *_used"
Then divide the result by however long I want the increment to be
After doing that I will just do something like UPDATE users SET energy=energy+$add_energy because if it hasn't been enough time the $add_energy will be 0

That will of course be set to max out at the users energy_total

My questions are:
Would this be a good way to do this?
Is there a better way to do this?

Also, would this structure work instead and jsut compare everything to last_revoked?

+----+-------------+--------+--------------+--------+--------------+--------------+
| id | username    | energy | energy_total | health | health_total | last_revoked |
+----+-------------+--------+--------------+--------+--------------+--------------+
|  1 | *********** |     10 |           10 |     10 |           10 |              |
|  2 | *********   |     10 |           10 |     10 |           10 |              |
+----+-------------+--------+--------------+--------+--------------+--------------+

[techietim]

Without a cron job, that is the best way to do it. Congrats.

[motormichael12]

Thanks