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[scott532]

Hi, I'm a beginner php user and I am trying to figure out how to access email addresses from a mysql table. I want to get that data and place it into a textarea and be able to send an email to those addresses. I also want to know if there are good ways to avoid those outgoing emails from being received by Spam catchers. Any suggestions on what types of things I should study before writing this program would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Scott

[Caesar]

http://www.php.net

The very basics of PHP should help you going in the right direction. Good luck.

[tomfmason]

this is a very simple mass mailer. It should give you the basic idea.

[code]
<?php
$message = mysql_real_esacpe_string(trim($_POST['message']));
$subject = mysql_real_escape_string(trim($_POST['subject']));
if ((!$message) || (!$subject)) {
    echo "You did not enter ether a subject or a message. Please try again";
    include("somepage.php");
    exit(1);
}
$sql = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM `sometable` WHERE `something` = '$something'") or die(mysql_error());
if (!$sql) {
    echo "There was an error in geting the email addresses from the database";
    include("somepage.php");
    exit(1);
}
while ($rw = mysql_fetch_assoc($sql)) {
    $email = $rw['email']; //the email field in your database
    //this is a simple mail. You may want to add more headers.
    mail($email, $subject, $message, "From: You<[email protected]>\nX-Mailer: PHP/" . phpversion());
}
?>[/code]

Now you just make a simple for with a textarea and a text box. One named message and the other subject. You then would post that to this script.

Hope that helps,
Tom
   
     

[AndyB]

If you want a happy server, avoid the overload associated with blasting out great amounts of mail by letting the server take a break once in a while:

[code]$i=0;
while ($rw = mysql_fetch_assoc($sql)) {
    $email = $rw['email']; //the email field in your database
    //this is a simple mail. You may want to add more headers.
    mail($email, $subject, $message, "From: You<[email protected]>\nX-Mailer: PHP/" . phpversion());
    $i++; // dummy counter to see if it's time for a rest
    if ($i==20) { sleep(1); $i=0;}
}

[/code]

[tomfmason]

^nice. I like that and will be using it from now on


thanks,
Tom