using php to send a batch of emails

[Anon]

Hello,

I was wondering if someone has experience using php to send a batch of emails.
I have run into problems doing this in two areas.

1) I have not been able to write "error handling" into the program because the mail() function allways returns true, and the code written to record the "send failures" never is triggered even when the address it is bad.

and

2) If I figure out #1, I may still have a problem with the maximum execution time, can the programmer change this in their script, or get around this.

Maybe I just need to get it out of my mind that php is the right language for this task, since it is really for creating dynamic content, etc.

I have read somewhere in php documentation about php being able to be used as a "regular" programing language (desktop, etc), I assume that a special interpreter is needed, anyone know anything about this?

Scott

[ame12]

You can do this.

1) Just sending emails to an SMTP server doesn't guarantee delivery. So... success on the send operation is not indicative of delivery. You'll need to perhaps set up a auto-responder email address ([e-mail]) that bounced replies will be sent to. You can manually or automatically then read that mailbox using POP3 commands to clean up your list. Remember that no one likes a spammer, though :-)

2) Set script execution time to 0... I think that will do it.

===========================================
http://badblue.com/helpphp.htm
Free small footprint web server for Windows

PHP, file-sharing, Access/Excel transcoding

[Anon]

Since someone else answered the mail specific questions, I'll talk about the other issue.

PHP <b>IS</b> a regular language. It may have started with web development in mind, but it's flexible/powerfull enough to do quite a bit and will only become more so.

Anyways, I think the documentation may have been referring to PHP-GTK. The GTK bindings that bring PHP out of the browser and to the desktop GUI world. It's a totally different way of hacking too. Event driven as opposed to top down the way we do it with web sites. The concept isn't difficult at all to wrap ones head around.

For info, try php.gtk.net.

Later on,
BDKR