Using email addresses from a database

[mrw2020]

I'm trying to set up a php script that takes an email address from a database and sends out a payment notification to it - I've written this piece of script, but unfortunately I can't test it on the server at the moment so I wondered if anyone could pick at the code and let me know if it's workable.

// This code is activated monthly via cron job and sends out a reminder for payment of service.

require_once('../mysql_con.php'); // database connection

$query = "SELECT price, email, company, name FROM invoice"; // selecting information from db
$result = mysql_query($query); // getting the results of the query
$row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result); // putting the results into a variable

// Set up the email variables
$from = "[e-mail]";
$to = $row['email'];
$subject = "Invoice";
$body = "<h1>To " . $row['company']. "</h1> Dear " . $row['name'] . "<br />Thank you for choosing <strong>me</strong> as your service provider, the following payment " . $row['price'] . " is now due.<br />Payment within 14 days would be greatly appreciated.<p> Kind Regards.</p>";

[planetphp]

Your code doesn't actually perform any mail action.

It looks as though you are preparing the elements required to send an email but you don't actually perform an action that would send the email, such as the mail() function or using an SMTP class.

[planetphp]

also your query is likely to return more than one row so you would want to wrap the mysql_fetch_assoc into a while loop.

[mrw2020]

Sorry I chopped off the mail() function - here is the full code. Yes I can see I might need a 'while' loop but I'm not quite sure how best to do this with this code, any help would be appreciated. Here is the full code:

// This code is activated monthly via cron job and sends out a reminder for payment of service.

require_once('../mysql_con.php'); // database connection

$query = "SELECT price, email, company, name FROM invoice"; // selecting information from db
$result = mysql_query($query); // getting the results of the query
$row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result); // putting the results into a variable

// Set up the email variables
$from = "[e-mail]";
$to = $row['email'];
$subject = "Invoice";
$body = "<h1>To " . $row['company']. "</h1> Dear " . $row['name'] . "<br />Thank you for choosing <strong>me</strong> as your service provider, the following payment " . $row['price'] . " is now due.<br />Payment within 14 days would be greatly appreciated.<p> Kind Regards.</p>";

mail($to, $subject, $body)

[planetphp]

while($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result))
{

// Set up the email variables
$from = "[e-mail]";
$to = $row['email'];
$subject = "Invoice";
$body = "<h1>To " . $row['company']. "</h1> Dear " . $row['name'] . "<br />Thank you for choosing <strong>me</strong> as your service provider, the following payment " . $row['price'] . " is now due.<br />Payment within 14 days would be greatly appreciated.<p> Kind Regards.</p>";

mail($to, $subject, $body);
}

That will loop through all the results. Although one thing you need to consider is your body text is html. If you want to send a html email you are going to have to improve your mail function to inculde mime types.

Here's a how to:

http://www.w3schools.com/php/func_mail_mail.asp

[mrw2020]

Many thanks for your quick reply, and thank you for the helpful link, I'm not very familiar with mime types - have to get studying!

[cretaceous]

don't send sequences of emails with bog standard php mail
it's ok for single emails but if sending a lot in one go, you want to use a mailer class

but mrw2020, if you are a service provider you must know all about servers and email !

[planetphp]

Agreed with above. In fact try to avoid the php mail() function full stop. Use an SMTP mailer class instead.

[mrw2020]

No I'm not a service provider but I agree with your comments, anything to ensure security. I'm testing out a cron job process for another project and just have one email in the database. could you point me in the direction of creating an SMTP mailer class, any useful links/threads?

Thank you for your time

[Derokorian]

On that note I recommend PHPMailer or Pear::Mail

[mrw2020]

Many thanks Derokorian, I've just downloaded it - it's just the thing I need 🙂

[planetphp]

Zend FW has some nice mailing classes.