Could someone help with my mailing list? Thank you in advance!

[mrlol12]

Hi guys,

 

I was just wondering if anyone could help me. I've got a My_SQL database containing articles, a summary for the article and a date. I have a basic CMS system set-up, but I want to create a script that when users sign up to a mail list it forwards the summary and dates of the articles database. If that makes sense? But I only want it to forward the most recent 5 rows. I'm pretty new to PHP and I've been mostly following tutorials thus far, but this is quite specific.

 

Thanks in advance!

[Nodral]

Hi

 

It's fairly straight-forward.

 

Run a MySQL SELECT statement to pull the data from the table and add

ORDER BY `date` DESC LIMIT 5.

 

This will effectively give you the 5 most recent database entries for you to attach / include in your emails

[mrlol12]

Hi there,

 

Thanks for that. So in an e-mail I can ad the variable say...

 

$mailContent = "SELECT * FROM articles WHERE 'date' . 'title' . 'summary' ORDER BY 'id' DESC LIMIT 5"

 

Into the e-mail itself? And that would pull through the top 5? I only wanted certain column to pull through also, so would the way I have put it above work?

 

Also, how would I actually go about making an e-mail automatically send out per month?

 

Cheers!

[Nodral]

You'd need a lot more than that.

 

<?php
// create sql statement to get information from DB
$sql="SELECT columnName FROM articles ORDER BY date DESC LIMIT 5";

//run the query against the DB
$sql=mysql_query;

//set variable to count the items
$a=0;

//create array containing all data pulled from DB anc cycle through it to do what you want
while($row=mysql_fetch_array($sql){

//create array of 5 variables containing individual items
$mailContent['$a']=$row['columnName'];

//increment your counter
$a++;
}

 

Regarding mailing it out, I personally use Rmail.  Do a google for it, it'll save you loads of time.

Then all you do is create your mail it include items

(You can get them out of the array easily using a foreach loop)

 

Regarding sending periodic emails, you need to look into cron jobs and have a reference in your DB table as to when the last one was sent out.