You need to mail() to hundreds of people at once!

[ppowell]

I have a task whereby an application will retrieve 1 to 1,000,000 email addresses and must email every single one of them at one time.

Very practical approach is.. ? How do you do this?

Thanx
Phil

[Nate]

I don't know if this is the most practical method but after trying a few different ideas, this is what I have found to work flawlessly for quite a while now:

I build the list of email addresses to send to and then send blocks of 500 BCC's at a time. This doesn't mean the page reloads after 500, but that you send a mail() call each for every 500.

block 1
TO: [e-mail]
BCC: email1, email2... email500

block 2
TO: [e-mail]
BCC: email501, email502... email1000

[Weedpacket]

Alternatively, you could search for an SMTP class that will do protocol with the mailserver directly (using mail() would mean connecting to the mail server, sending an email, disconnecting from the mail server, connecting to the mail server, sending an email, disconnecting from the mail server...). There's a fairly good one in PEAR, but it is by no means the only one.

[chintupintu03]

Can you read the email IDs in a loop and call mail() function to send the message?

I don't know whether it is practically posssible to send to thousands of IDs through the "looping option".

The experienced members can give you proper alternate methods

[ppowell]

What I wound up doing is something called an "email bundler". A .txt file containing the 1 - 1000000000 email addresses that is serviced by a single alias, a "dummy" email address, that the SMTP will be spoofed into thinking you're sending to just one email address when, in fact, you're using your email program (e.g. Sendmail, etc.) to run a bundler to send to zillions instead.

Oh swell. I perfected spam. 🙁

Phil

[Drakla]

phpmailer (search and you will find) now has an smtp keep alive option for most goodness, but it recommends that if you're sending from a single server using sendmail then use that instead.