Update content to email members

[thomwilkes]

Trying to get my head round a system that lets users signup then select items that they wish to track/monitor.
When the database is updated with new content, members that have selected to track certain articles are automatically emailed advising them so.
Any pointers or links to similar existing opensource databases would be greatly appreciated.

[sfhc]

An approach may be this:

You need to have a table that defines the trackable items by ID an name. You need to have a table the records the user preference by userID and trackableID. If you already understand relational tables that should make sense.

You need some way tough to track what has been updated.

Once you work that out, you can create a cron job to scan the system for updates, and using the 2 tables above, make matches between user prefernces and trackable items. When there is a match, generate an e-mail.

[michael]

Although there are many ways to do this, most of them difficult, I prefer a more simple approach.

You could use a foreign key to link the events....

Or if you don't plan to ever renumber your users, set the users table up as :

uid, username, realname, itemswatched

and the items table:

iid, itemname, itemdesc

In the itemswatched, simply place the item id of the item to be watched.

Then when the user is logged in, scan that for all items. Seperate them by '|'.

Select itemswatched from usertable;
$items = explode($mysql_result[0]);

there, $items[0] = item1
etc.etc. ad naseum.