Email Timing

[rambles]

Hi,

I have a simple question that probably requires a complex answer. I would like to a way to automatically send an email on someones birthday. This would involve searching a (very) small database (each day?) and then send an email if appropriate.
Unfortunately, I haven't got a bloody clue how! Any ideas?

My only two small ideas are:

a) Have a program that's permanently running that simply checks each day and then sends when neccessary. I imagine this wouldn't be popular with the server people.

b) Run a script once (a month/quarter/year)that "queue's up" the email 'somewhere' which then gets sent on the appropriate days.

As you may have guessed I am a bit of a newbie at programming and really only know PHP/JavaScript/HTML. PERL and other stuff is a dead loss to me. If it's any help, the server I use uses QMail as its email jobby and I also have a CGI-Bin (whatever the hell that might be!)

Many thanks for any ideas you may have, Richard.

[[deleted]]

Read about the cron and crontab (search the forum and use google)
that let's you run scripts on a daily basis (and a lot more that you don't need to know)

The script that you could use would be simply one database query to see if there are any birthdays on today's date, and execute the mail() function for each birthdayboy.

I suggest you start by reading the manual about using databases and start trying things out.

If you have more questions just check the manual, search the forum or post your question (preferably in that order)

[Anon]

There is two type of PHP.. one is running as a module of web server, another is running as a CGI by itself.

You can not use cron to run a php which runs as a module.

[[deleted]]

"You can not use cron to run a php which runs as a module."

You can, except you need an intermediate like 'lynx' to call a URL