automated e-mail scheduler

Anon

I have written a page that queries a MySQL database and sends an e-mail listing the current active users authorized to gain entrance into a Web Application we developed.

Currently, this email is sent only when I manually run the page in a browser. However, I want to set this up to be an automated process that is scheduled to run monthly. Does anybody know how I would go about doing this? Can PHP do this?

Anon

PHP may not be the best way to do it. Chances are there's another solution that is a bit more sensable, not that I know what it is.
But if you wanted to get PHP to do it, you could make a crontab that ran lynx to hit the page. If you don't know what I'm talking about, read up on Cron and Crontabs and on lynx. I don't know what platform you're running on, but if it's linux or unix it probably has lynx. Both my virtual servers do.

Anon

Thanks for your help. We are running on Windows NT and IIS 4.0 as our Web Server, so I'm not familiar with LYNX and crontabs...But I'll check into it anyway.

Thanks,

Anon

I don't know NT and IIS. But NT has the equivilant of CRONTABS. I beleive in NT it's the AT service. Just runs a program or script at a specified time. You could probably use IE just like Lynx to call a webpage. There's some way to specify the page to open with the command line. Ofcourse, it seems like you'd wind up with a new instance of IE opened every month. But if it's a local server, that's not a big deal.
But I'm sure there's a smoother solution than that. You can configure MajorDomo, a list serve program to mail on a schedule, but I don't know if it could make the calls to the database, and I don't know if it's available in NT.

Anon

I don't know much about NT, but on a UNIX system I would use have a cron job execute a perl script to do this. Or, if you have PHP compiled as a CGI you could have your cron job execute a PHP script. If you want to do PHP scripting, but run PHP as a server module you should be able to have a separate install of PHP compiled as a CGI and use it for scripting.

On UNIX you can do a cron job to have LYNX execute your PHP, but if you are doing something like emailing a thousand people your LYNX may think your page is taking too long to load.

Anon

It wouldn't be a problem with lynx. Just output some junk and then do all your processing. It wont matter if Lynx gives up. PHP will finish running the script if you use the proper connection handling settings. And you can set these in a script, for that one script. Check out the php manual connection handling page :

http://www.php.net/manual/features.connection-handling.php

And you can still create an activity log in PHP by outputing to file or a database.

Anon

Hello,
I am still stuck up with this scheduler problem. i am writing this in detail.

I want to schedule a php script to run after every 15 mins and send mails to everybody. The server is of Unix and I have made a file named cronrem.txt which contains following code.

15 /usr/bin/nice -15 /home/ccipl/www/forum/sendreminder.php3 where /home/ccipl/www/forum is the directory where my php file(sendreminder) is stored as well as the cronrem.txt file(the file which contains the cron entry) is stored. Then I logon to telnet and go to the specific directory and give the command crontab cronrem.txt.

But i could not get the output. Please tell me exactly how i should do it as i am a novice in unix. Also I dont know if I have a advanced right . also I couldnt understand about compiling php as CGI..... etc etc.

Anon

PHP is not an application that can be run outside the WWW environment. PHP requires the webserver in order for PHP to work properly (with the exception of the cgi version I think).

So, that being said, for you to try and run the php script from cron, you need to invoke it with something that will force that php script through the webserver. I would use lynx.

15 /usr/bin/nice -15 lynx http://localhost/forum/sendreminder.php3

Anon

hi jim,
I tried what you told me. But still it is not working. Will I have to include some additional code in my sendreminder.php3 file
to indicate that it is the file to be scheduled . also I have written this command:

15 /usr/bin/nice -15 lynx http://localhost/forum/sendreminder.php3

(Which you had told me) in a txt file and i am running this file at unix prompt using crontab filename.txt . Is this ok? Also I have changed the permission of this txt file to allow me to execute this file.

Please reply urgently.

Anon

hello,
thanks for the help. atleast the crontab utility is working. Only one thing is remaining. it is a bit strange problem .

I have written in my cron file like this.

0,15,30,45 /usr/bin/lynx http://www.ccipl.com/forum/sendreminder.php3
this sends the mails at an interval of 15 mins. now suppose i want to send the mails in every 5 mins then i add more entries in my crontab file. something like this 0,5,10,15,20.... **** .... etc. But because of wordwrap property a part of the entry moves to the next line.
Then an error is diplayed saying bad minute error in crontab file.
How should i deal with this word wrap property problem ?

Also are their any restrictions to the use of lynx?

Hoping for some quick response.

Anon

Lynx really isn't the best way to go about this. Create a CGI version of PHP. You never have to use it with your web server, but use it form the command line to invoke the script. I'm using this method mail database stats to my boss once a month. It works great.