Queue Mails

maskme

Dear All

I'm basically send emails to around 6000 emails. The way I'm doing is the scripts sends 100 per 30 seconds.

Now my questions is: Is there a possibility that even if I close my Internet Explorer or my PC suddenly restarts, the email keeps going / or is queued on the server???

I'm using the normal mail() to send the emails.

Your suggestions / ideas on this would be good.

Thanks

bradgrafelman

First off, let me start by pasting a quote from the PHP manual in regards to the mail() function:

PHP Manual wrote:
Note: It is worth noting that the mail() function is not suitable for larger volumes of email in a loop. This function opens and closes an SMTP socket for each email, which is not very efficient.
For the sending of large amounts of email, see the » PEAR::Mail, and » PEAR::Mail_Queue packages.

In addition, I'll also direct you to the following manual page to answer your question about closing your browser: [man]function.ignore_user_abort[/man].

djjjozsi

If you close the browser means you close the php program.
its always a better technique to use timeing by CRON.
And always track the previously sent mails to be able to count how many of them sent before.

bradgrafelman

djjjozsi;10944819 wrote:
If you close the browser means you close the php program.

Eh.. not really. PHP doesn't actually detect the disconnect until it tries to output something. So really, if this script never outputted anything, then you could close your browser and it wouldn't (at least, shouldn't) abort the execution of the PHP script.

maskme

hi, i like this suggestion by you

In addition, I'll also direct you to the following manual page to answer your question about closing your browser: function.ignore_user_abort.

Just one question, how will i know whether the emails were sent without any problems??? Usually if the script times out or the network connection error it shows on the browser???

bradgrafelman

maskme;10944823 wrote:
Just one question, how will i know whether the emails were sent without any problems??? Usually if the script times out or the network connection error it shows on the browser???

On a production site, display_errors should always be Off and you should instead enable [man]log_errors[/man] and specify the [man]error_log[/man] directive.

Also know that you really don't know whether the e-mails were sent without problems. All you can find out is if the MTA that PHP is connecting to accepted the e-mails for delivery; it could fail to send them or the e-mails could get blocked and you'd never know.

maskme

just one final question, since my script uses help of javascript to run through the records, so I doubt this will work as the Javascript is Client side scripting?

Also I read
"The script should output something to the browser in order to abort. If there is no output the script keeps on running." (last comment from http://www.php.net/function.ignore_user_abort)

So as per the above my script shouldn't output anything even if its javascript, else the closing of the browser wont make any sense, since already something has been outputted which aborts the script.

Since i Use RICH Text Editor to send mails, and HTML forms & buttons, i need to make the sending path ONLY Server side, without sending anything. Am i right???

bradgrafelman

maskme;10944829 wrote:
just one final question, since my script uses help of javascript to run through the records, so I doubt this will work as the Javascript is Client side scripting?

That seems rather odd.. you're using client-side scripting to do a server-side task? Can you elaborate a little on this?

maskme;10944829 wrote:
Also I read
"The script should output something to the browser in order to abort. If there is no output the script keeps on running." (last comment from http://www.php.net/function.ignore_user_abort)

So as per the above my script shouldn't output anything even if its javascript, else the closing of the browser wont make any sense, since already something has been outputted which aborts the script.

Since i Use RICH Text Editor to send mails, and HTML forms & buttons, i need to make the sending path ONLY Server side, without sending anything. Am i right???

I'm not sure I understand what you're asking. Once you've finished composing the mail and everything, all you should have to do is submit the form (or whatever) and let the PHP script parse the data and start sending out the e-mails.

If you wanted to output some type of status message, e.g. "starting batch #4" or some kind of heartbeat message, you could always use [man]connection_aborted/man after setting the ignore_user_abort directive to check if the user has closed their browser; if they haven't, send the status message... otherwise don't output anything.