If you are releasing an application and need it to be able to update its self you can use fopen to open a remote file. for example:

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<?php
if($fp = fopen("http://server/file-to-update-from", "r")) {
$content = '';
while($line = fread($fp, 1024)) {
$content .= $line;
}
fclose($fp);
$fh = open("localfile-to-update", "w"); # you can use "a" for append if needed
fwrite($fh, $content);=
fclose($fh);
}
?>

As you can see its very simple to do. You can then create a cron job which will run this update application to check for updates every so often.

Thanks

- Alex