Constructing mailing recipient string

[mev2000]

Hi,

Does anybody know how to construct a recipient string for the mail function starting from a table of email addresses.

I was thinking
<?
$recipients=array("[e-mail]", "[e-mail]"...);
$recipient_list=implode(", ", $recipients);

?>
but I'm not sure how to get the email addresses into the array() function on the fly.

Thanks folks.

Elvin

[chaostik]

Elvin,

You say "from a table of email addresses" ... do you mean a database?? What database (MySQL, PostgreSQL, ...)??

If you do mean from a database I would have thought something vaguely like (for PostgreSQL):

<?
// Make connection to you database first then:
$res = pg_exec($conn,"SELECT email_addr FROM yourtable");
if( !$res || pg_numrows($res) < 1 ) {
/ Print an error and quit here because there was a database error or we have no e-mail addresses /
}

$recipients = pg_result($res,0,"email_addr");
for( $i = 1; $i < pg_numrows($res); $i++ ) {
$recipients .= ", " . pg_result($res,$i,"email_addr");
}
?>

Hope that helps, but if it doesn't perhaps you could expand on the source of the addresses?

Louis

[mev2000]

Hi,

Apologies - It is a MySQL database, and the table holds email addresses of people signed up for a newsletter.

[chaostik]

Elvin,

Thanks for replying. I see what you want to do now. However, just a suggestion: if the newsletter is public (ie not just between people who know each other) then you probably want to avoid putting everybody in the "To:" field of the e-mail. Basically, people are not going to be very pleased if their e-mail address is published to everybody else on the newsletter mailing list.

If that is the case, then despite the overhead, you would want to do a separate mail() to each address. Alternatively, send it "To:" yourself and put everyone in a "Bcc:" field, but I'm not sure if there is a limit to how many address you can "Bcc:" to.

Here's one solution:

<?
$conn = mysql_connect("localhost","username","passwd");
if( !$conn ) {
echo "Error connecting: ",mysql_error();
exit();
}

$res = mysql_query("SELECT email FROM yourtable", $conn);
if( !$res || mysql_num_rows($res)<1 ) {
echo "Error: ",mysql_error($conn);
exit();
}

$mailbcc = mysql_result($res,0,"email");
for( $i = 1; $i < mysql_num_rows($res); $i++ ) {
$mailbcc .= ", " . mysql_result($res,$i,"email");
}

if( !mail("[e-mail]","Newsletter Subject","Newsletter Body","bcc: ".$mailbcc."\n") ) {
echo "Error: mail sending failed";
exit();
}
?>

That is fairly rough and you'll have to customise it, but it should do the job. Only your address will be visible to all the recipients then. The alternative is to do this:

<?
$conn = mysql_connect("localhost","username","passwd");
if( !$conn ) {
echo "Error connecting: ",mysql_error();
exit();
}

$res = mysql_query("SELECT email FROM yourtable", $conn);
if( !$res || mysql_num_rows($res)<1 ) {
echo "Error: ",mysql_error($conn);
exit();
}

for( $i = 0; $i < mysql_num_rows($res); $i++ ) {
if( !mail(mysql_result($res,$i,"email"),"Newsletter Subject","Newsletter Body") ) {
echo "Error sending mail to ",mysql_result($res,$i,"email");
}
}
?>

Which would send a separate e-mail to every person. This would have a much higher overhead than the Bcc route.

Hope this helps,

Louis