richardkurth

I want to limit these script two send 100 email and then pause for a few
seconds and then send another 100 emails and repeat this tell it has
sent all the emails that are dated for today. This script is runs by
cron so it is running in the background.

How would I do this and is it the best way to do it. I am using swift
mailer to send the mail.

I think I would use limit 100 in the query but how would I tell it to
get the next 100.

$today = date("Y-m-d");
# Cache the Contact that will recive campain messages today
$query = "SELECT emailmessages. * , contacts.* FROM emailmessages,
contacts WHERE emailmessages.contact_id = contacts.id AND
emailmessages.nextmessagedate = '$today' AND contacts.emailstatus =
'Active'";
$DB_Contact_Result = mysql_query($query);
if (!$DB_Contact_Result) {
die('Invalid query: ' . mysql_error());
}
while ($this_row = mysql_fetch_array ($DB_Contact_Result)){

$CustomerID=$this_row["id"];

//get the message for the contact
$query1 = "SELECT * FROM emailcampaign where member_id =
'$this_row[members_id]' AND campaign_id = '$this_row[emailcampaign]' AND
day = '$this_row[email_number]'";

$DB_Mail_Result = mysql_query($query1);
if (!$DB_Mail_Result) {
die('Invalid query: ' . mysql_error());
}
$Mail_row = mysql_fetch_array($DB_Mail_Result);
//get member stuff
$query2 = "SELECT * FROM member where members_id =
'$this_row[members_id]'";

$DB_Member_Result = mysql_query($query2);
if (!$DB_Member_Result) {
die('Invalid query: ' . mysql_error());
}

$subject=stripslashes($Mail_row['subject']);

$message=stripslashes($Mail_row['textmessage']);

$hmessage=stripslashes($Mail_row['htmlmessage']);

$swiftPlain = $message;
$MailFrom1=$this_row['emailaddress'];
$MailFromName1=$this_row['firstname'];

$full_name=stripslashes($this_row['firstname']) ." " .
stripslashes($this_row['lastname']);
//Create the message
$message = new Swift_Message($subject);
$message->attach(new Swift_Message_Part($swiftPlain));
$message->attach(new Swift_Message_Part($swiftHtml, "text/html"));
$message->setReturnPath($MailAddReplyTo);
$message->setReplyTo($MailFrom1,$MailFromName1);
//Now check if Swift actually sends it
$swift->send($message,
$this_row['emailaddress'],$MailFrom1,$MailFromName1);

#After we send the email we need to update the database to send the next
message
# get the next message number
$nextday=getnextday(stripslashes($this_row['emailcampaign']),stripslashes($this_row['members_id']),stripslashes($this_row['email_number']));
# get the new dates
$newdate=getnewdate(stripslashes($this_row['emailstarted']),$nextday);
#update the emailmessages
//unsubscribecode
updateemailmessages($unpass,$nextday,$newdate,stri pslashes($this_row['em_id']),stripslashes($this_row['email_number']));

}//end of mail loop

aballard

I've done something very similar. I have a delivery timestamp column
in the table that is initially NULL, and I set it to UTC_TIMESTAMP()
for each row as I send the message. My query looks like this then:

SELECT * FROM mail_queue WHERE delivery_timestamp IS NULL LIMIT 100.

Andrew

richardkurth

Then what do you do to get the next 100 emails without sending the same ones

micah

Here's a PEAR package that handles this:
http://pear.php.net/package/Mail_Queue/

Thank you,
Micah Gersten
onShore Networks
Internal Developer
http://www.onshore.com

stephen-d

I would use a temporary table to hold all the email created in one job.

Have a status field marked as sent, waiting or open.

Have a cron job set 'x' number of open emails to waiting. Execute
periodically.
Have a cron job to send all waiting email and update status to sent.
Execute periodically.

Stephen

dmagick

Re-read the reply.

After each email is sent, the timestamp is set.

The original query looks for timestamp fields that are not set.

--
Postgresql & php tutorials
http://www.designmagick.com/

php

There's no need to limit the DB query, nor to track what's been sent by
updating the DB. Grab all of the addresses at once and let SwiftMailer
deal with the throttling:

require('Swift/lib/Swift.php');
require('Swift/lib/Swift/Connection/SMTP.php');

/* this handles the throttling
*/
require('Swift/lib/Swift/Plugin/AntiFlood.php');


/* this holds all of your addresses
*/
$recipients = new Swift_RecipientList();


/* Grab the addresses from the DB (this is using MDB2)
*/ $result = ...
while ($row = $result->fetchRow()) {
$recipients->addTo($row['address'], $row['name']); }
@$result->free();

try
{
$swift = new Swift(new Swift_Connection_SMTP('localhost'), 'your_domain'); set_time_limit(0);
$swift->log->enable();

/* 100 mails per batch with a 60 second pause between batches */
$swift->attachPlugin(new Swift_Plugin_AntiFlood(100, 60), 'anti-flood');

flush();

$message = new Swift_Message('your subject');
$message->setCharset('utf-8');
$message->setReplyTo(...);
$message->setReturnPath(...);
$message->headers->set('Errors-To', ...);
$message->attach(new Swift_Message_Part($plain_content));
$message->attach(new Swift_Message_Part($html_content, 'text/html'));
$num_sent = $swift->batchSend($message, $recipients, new Swift_Address(..., '...'));
$swift->disconnect();

....


This is a rough example taken from my own script. This would need to be
modified if you're not sending the same message to all recipients, of
course. It's not clear to me from your example.

b

aballard

Nice! I'll have to look into this library some time. How do you
control it to prevent sending the same message though? I can't imagine
this is called from a web page, because I'm guessing it would take a
few minutes to finish. If it's called from a cron job, don't you still
have to somehow flag the message as having been delivered so that the
next process doesn't come along and send the same thing all over
again?

Andrew

php

I'm not sure about that. Mine is for a newsletter (not personalised) so
Swift just needs a list of addresses. I can't remember if AntiFlood can
be used for many unique mails. I suspect that it doesn't.


cron. But, if you wanted it fired from an admin page (I can't imagine a
good situation where something like this would be public) you could add
ignore_user_abort() and then jazz up the page with some async JS.

If it's called from a cron job, don't you still


Yeah, I just twigged to the fact that your messages are stored in the
database. This is some kind of messaging system? As opposed to a
newsletter-type thing, I mean. As above, I don't know that AntiFlood is
what you want. That's meant for multiple-recipient mails.

There's also a Throttler plugin, though, again, it's meant for batches.

You might also look at the IMAP functions. Instead of storing the
messages in the DB, you can let the MTA deal with pushing them out and
cut Swift (and the cro0n job) out of the loop.

b

aballard

The case I have in mind is for a newsletter, and in this instance they
are all the same. In this instance, I am limited by the host to 2500
messages/hour. (Originally it was 900). At this point, 2500 is more
than enough for this group, but I'd still like to play kindly with the
server resources since this is a shared host. I just set up a generic
message queue and dump mail there rather than sending it real time.
For now, all the messages in a given batch are the same, but I was
leaving flexibility in case I hit a situation where that changed.

It looks like this would work pretty well when I'm up for a rewrite.

I understand the general idea:

1. read message body from storage (file, database, etc.)
2. get result set containing addresses from database
3. build recipient list from result set
4. send everything to sendBatch()

It seems to me that step 5 still has to either (a) delete the message
body from storage or else (b) flag it as sent so that the next process
spawned via cron sees that there is no work to do and dies rather than
repeating the whole process again.

Andrew