||- background processes?

sfullman

Hi there,

Let's suppose i have a database that has a list of 700 members, each with emails. I want to loop through each record in the database and send an email to each member that has so requested when a post is made (just like you receive emails of posts to this forum if you've opted to do so).

Here is the problem: If the list got to be large, the script might time out, OR, if the user hit escape in their browser, only half the people would get their email.

I want to make the process out of the poster's hands as soon as they make the post, so that would require some kind of "hand off" to a background or resident program.

Anybody have any suggestions?

Alternately, is there some technology in the mail server where I can hand it a list but where everyone gets only a single copy with no CC's listed? If i used BCC that could be a huge request -- I'm looking for the best strategy in this.

Sam Fullman
Compass Point Media

greg252

I would probably use a foreach loop and use a mail function on each address- sending the info you want to send.

Just a quick way to work around the timeout:
Select count,
divied by a number that would execute the mail function in the allowed time,
write that result to a txt file (default value=0),
loop : if the number = total, start over from 0.

execute the foreach mail function on a select with limits from txt file,

Set the whole thing up as a cron job and run it as many times necessary.

Not a whole lotta thought, maybe it would work.
Greg

nashirak

Another way to do it... Windows and Linux both have a schedular to schedule tasks. Windows they call it task scheduler and Linux its called Cron. Put a script in one of these directories and follow the whatever instructions or setups they may call for. Then just have some other program like Perl or C or even PHP (if you have it compiled as a CGI module its easy if not there are tricks to make it run... see board for more). Just have the program in your schedule open a file or database of people who you need to mail to... and what you need to mail them. (I hope that makes sense 🙂 ).

This is the way this forum does it I think. If you notice there is a delay between you posting and the mail being sent.

Hope this Helps!

sfullman

Well, at least I learned a new term -- CRON. I wil do some research on that, also I knew eventually I'v have to delve into what PHP is as a "CGI module" as you explained, if you know any good references for either of these I'd appreciate it.

Thanks,

Sam Fullman
Compass Point Media

Anon

you can do it using a shellscript in PHP, thats what i did when i had to get a page to send an email to the user at the hour the user specified, i made a script that read from a DB the time and message the user wanted to receive and when the time was right i sent it...

there is an article aournd here explaining how to do shellscripting with PHP, of course you could do it with C or PERL, i did it in PHP because i can do it faster that way

bye