Send batch emails (mass emailing)

bsgrules

I've seen a lot of threads relating to mass emails, but none are really related to my question so bare with me.

All shared servers limit the # of emails sent per x amount of minutes, as they should to keep load down. My question is, I've seen perl scripts (ie. dada mail) that do whats called batch emailing which esentially allows you to send a large amount of emails by splitting the mailing list into batches to lets say 5 per minute.

Can php do something like this? I have no idea how perl does this in the first place. In php, whenever you execute a shell command, doesn't it make you wait until it completes. So is it even possible to execute a shell command through php and leave it running as a background process or however those perl scripts are doing it.

drew010

php can call shell programs using the backtick operator, and you can use sleep to pause for a given amount of time and then resume. just grab a list of all the emails, and divide them up into parts, or just use an array and only send 50 at a time or something before pausing.

goldlikesnow

A simple solution is that if you'r on a shared Linux server you can set up a crontask to execute a php script every x minutes, just read your database and set a flag for already send batches.

I hope your not using this info for sending emails about love pills or something!!!! :glare:

bsgrules

Sometimes I wonder if thats the reason people are so hesitant in offering advise. Has it ever occurred that even a small mailing list of lets say 500 people would require you to do batch emailing on a shared server. I've come to realize its impossible to do what perl does with php when it comes to executing shell commands. I guess, i'll pick up a perl book and start learning it.

drew010

what is it you want to do with shell commands, php can execute them.

bsgrules

Well, I can't really give you any more details other that I would like to do exactly what dada mail does but using php. You simply setup your batch configuration and click submit and the cmd is sent to the shell. No need to keep the script running in the browser, it does it in the background. I have no idea how.

drew010

well in php you can call ignore_user_abort and specify whether or not the script should terminate after the user closes the browser. the backtick operator can execute shell commands, perhaps to a php script you wrote to run in the shell. as far as mailing in batches, id say load all the email addresses to an array, and then use a foreach, and use an if statement with a modulus to determine how many youve sent, and pause after every x messages using sleep function.
i mean it is true, perl is more of a language for this because it was not written originally for cgi scripts, just to perform tasks on the server in a higher level than c, and php was originally created to do webpages, and was later modified to support cli modes, so its not quite as flexible as far as working with shell stuff.

Drakla

If you want to kick off a script and have it tell you it's safe to keep it running use the buffering and headers trick I found here http://phpbuilder.com/board/showpost.php?p=10636393&postcount=15

Or if you want to kick off another script and leave it running then just throw its output into dead space when you exec / passthru / backtick it - something like

php yourscript.php > /dev/null 2>&1 &