How Can I Send Less than 500 emails/hour?

DRandy

I have a custom script that uses

return @mail($to, $subject, $message);

when a condition is met. Sometimes this might call for sending out over 500 emails.

I need to throttle this down below 500 so it sends say 300 this hour and then 300 next hour and so forth.

Thanks for your help.

NogDog

Do you want throttled messages to be queued up to be sent later, or just discarded?

DRandy

I need to send the messages not discard them to the email addresses in a certain table.

NogDog

First thing I'd probably try is finding some ready-made queuing package. For instance, the PEAR repository has the Mail_Queue package. I'm sure there are other possibilities in places such as SourceForge.Net.

If I had to roll my own, I'd probably insert messages into a database table, then have a cron job run every few minutes reading x number of oldest messages from the table ("ORDER BY time_field ASC LIMIT 10", for example) and then send those emails. ("10" would be adjusted to whatever number times the selected cron periodicity would be equal to the max number per hour.)

DRandy

I looked at mail_queue and have no idea how to use it. I looked at the tutorial and it's certainly not for a beginner.

It talks about setting up a table in the database which I did then the config file.

In the first part of the file it says -

require_once "Mail/Queue.php";

That's the first place I got stumped. Where is that file? It doesn't give me anything else about it. I understand what it's for but do I create that file or maybe change the path. But to what?

I'm stumped.

NogDog

Unless that PEAR package is already installed on your system, you would have to download and install it (as well as any other packages it may depend on). If you have no idea about that, you could run the following to see if it points to any PEAR directory:

<?php
echo ini_get('include_path');
?>

If that does not output some directory probably ending with the word "pear", then it is likely that PEAR is not installed on your host. If it is, then just try the following to see if the Mail_Queue package is installed:

<?php
ini_set(display_errors, 1);
error_reporting(E_ALL);
require_once 'Mail/Queue.php';
?>

If no error is displayed, then you're probably good to go. If there is some sort of require() error message, then it's time to decide if you want to figure out how to install PEAR or look for another solution. 😉

DRandy

I used

<?php
echo ini_get('include_path');
?>

and it outputs .:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php

Then I tried your second one and it doesn't output anything.

NogDog

Probably because I forgot to put quotes around 'display_errors': :o

<?php
ini_set('display_errors', 1);
error_reporting(E_ALL);
require_once 'Mail/Queue.php';
?>

DRandy

I copied it to my file and still doesn't display anything. I asked my host provider and they say it's installed. Could the path be wrong? What else could it be?

NogDog

If you're not getting an error, that's a good thing. Next I guess would be to try the tutorial and see what happens.

DRandy

So the require statement is OK

Then this code:

// type is the container used, currently there are 'creole', 'db', 'mdb' and 'mdb2' available
$db_options['type'] = 'mdb2';
// the others are the options for the used container
// here are some for db
$db_options['dsn'] = 'mysql://user:password@host/database';
$db_options['mail_table'] = 'mail_queue';

Do I make any changes to this?

Weedpacket

It might be possible to configure the mail server to throttle its behaviour to, say, pausing 8 seconds between emails (i.e., 450/hr). This strikes me as the more transparent solution.

DRandy

The hosting company controls the mail server. I already asked that question. So, I'm trying to get Mail_Queue configured. So going back to my last question:

In the config file below:

// type is the container used, currently there are 'creole', 'db', 'mdb' and 'mdb2' available
$db_options['type'] = 'mdb2';
// the others are the options for the used container
// here are some for db
$db_options['dsn'] = 'mysql://userassword@host/database';
$db_options['mail_table'] = 'mail_queue';

Can I change the"mdb2" to "db" or should I leave it as is?
Would I change"'mysql://userpassword@host/database" to something different or leave as is?

Let's deal with that for now.

Thanks

NogDog

The 'type' option is referring to which PEAR database package to use, so if you use MDB2, so the DSN would probably be something like:

'mysql://username:password@localhost/database_name'

'username' and 'password' would be the respective values you use to connect to MySQL
'database_name' would be the name of the database being used to queue the mail
If you do not connect to your DB host via 'localhost', then you would change that to the applicable host name (and :port_number if applicable).

DRandy

Still confused about something. Why would I have to connect to my database?

I created a table that Mail_Queue will be using and I just added it to my database.

Once in the application, I would already be connected.

So would I just delete this line or change it? To what?

Thanks

NogDog

The Mail_Queue package is designed to use one of the PEAR database abstraction layers (such as MDB2), so it needs to connect to the DB via the mechanism for the selecte PEAR DB package. (This is done so that Mail_Queue is not "hard-wired" to use one particular DBMS.)

DRandy

So I've set that.

Now the rest of the config file is:

// here are the options for sending the messages themselves
// these are the options needed for the Mail-Class, especially used for Mail::factory()
$mail_options['driver']    = 'smtp';
$mail_options['host']      = 'mail.mysite.com';
$mail_options['port']      = 25;
$mail_options['localhost'] = 'localhost'; //optional Mail_smtp parameter
$mail_options['auth']      = false;
$mail_options['username']  = '';
$mail_options['password']  = '';
?>

I'm not sure what to put in for username and password. Would that be username and password for my email "from" address or should I leave it blank?

Thanks for your patience with me.

NogDog

I think if you just want to use the PHP built-in mail function, you only need to set $mail_options['driver'] = 'mail';. If you want to use SMTP, then you'd probably need to change the 'host' value to the applicable mail host, and set the username and password.

DRandy

Now for the second part.
I am using this function to get and send the mail.

function emailMembers($membersArray) 
{  

if (count($membersArray) > 0) 
{    

foreach ($membersArray as $member) 
{  

$to = $member["user_email"];  

$subject = __("blah blah");
$cancel_message .= __("blah blah")."\r\n\n";
mail($to,$subject,$cancel_message);    

}  

}
}

Mail_Queue calls for a second file which is called add_message.php shown below.

<?php
include './config.php';
/* we use the db_options and mail_options here */
$mail_queue =& new Mail_Queue($db_options, $mail_options);


$from = 'user@server.com';
$to = "user2@server.com";
$message = 'Hi! This is test message!! :)';

$hdrs = array( 'From'    => $from,
               'To'      => $to,
               'Subject' => "test message body"  );

/* we use Mail_mime() to construct a valid mail */
$mime =& new Mail_mime();
$mime->setTXTBody($message);
$body = $mime->get();
$hdrs = $mime->headers($hdrs);


/* Put message to queue */
$mail_queue->put( $from, $to, $hdrs, $body );

?>

Can I make the add_message.php code part of my emailMembers function (the first one above)? And then call it when the condition is met? Does that work? And then run a cron job to process the emails?

If not what would your suggestion be?

Thanks again for helping me.