Using PHP for nightly backend tasks?

[Charles]

I have to develop a script to be run nightly to go through a database
and send emails based on conditions. It's a large database, and there
are several thousands of emails to be sent during the week everyday.
The script will be run with a cron job at midnight or so.

I was wondering if PHP is suitable for this, or may it be problematic,
for instance would its execution abort after a certain amount of time?
Or is it perfectly fine for this task?
Thanks.

[Gordon Burditt]

Re: Using PHP for nightly backend tasks?

>I have to develop a script to be run nightly to go through a database

>and send emails based on conditions. It's a large database, and there
>are several thousands of emails to be sent during the week everyday.
>The script will be run with a cron job at midnight or so.
>
>I was wondering if PHP is suitable for this, or may it be problematic,
>for instance would its execution abort after a certain amount of time?
>Or is it perfectly fine for this task?

You may want command-line PHP for this task. The interface is a
little different (e.g. no $_GET and $_POST) but you can set different
parameters and I believe the run time limit defaults to infinite.
Anyway, the parameters can be put in a different .ini file and set
differently than for web-based PHP.

[C.]

Re: Using PHP for nightly backend tasks?

On 18 Jul, 00:09, gordonb.h6...@b urditt.org (Gordon Burditt) wrote:

I have to develop a script to be run nightly to go through a database
and send emails based on conditions. It's a large database, and there
are several thousands of emails to be sent during the week everyday.
The script will be run with a cron job at midnight or so.

>

I was wondering if PHP is suitable for this, or may it be problematic,
for instance would its execution abort after a certain amount of time?
Or is it perfectly fine for this task?

>
You may want command-line PHP for this task. The interface is a
little different (e.g. no $_GET and $_POST) but you can set different
parameters and I believe the run time limit defaults to infinite.
Anyway, the parameters can be put in a different .ini file and set
differently than for web-based PHP.

You can set the time limit at run time. Also, while using the CLI PHP
(which cames as standard with the SAPI module in most Linux distros)
is the prefered option, you can invoke a web page using the wget
command (or curl) - but, in addition to to getting your webserver to
maintain a very long connection, you would need to expose the relevant
script via the web interface.

To run the php script from the command line...

php -q /some/where/mysrcipt.php

or insert the path to the command processor as the first line of your
script and make it executable:

#!/usr/bin/php5
<php>
.....

chmod ug+x /some/where/mysrcipt.php

C.

[MonTassaR]

Re: Using PHP for nightly backend tasks?

On Jul 18, 1:09 am, gordonb.h6...@b urditt.org (Gordon Burditt) wrote:

I have to develop a script to be run nightly to go through a database
and send emails based on conditions. It's a large database, and there
are several thousands of emails to be sent during the week everyday.
The script will be run with a cron job at midnight or so.

>

I was wondering if PHP is suitable for this, or may it be problematic,
for instance would its execution abort after a certain amount of time?
Or is it perfectly fine for this task?

>
You may want command-line PHP for this task. The interface is a
little different (e.g. no $_GET and $_POST) but you can set different
parameters and I believe the run time limit defaults to infinite.
Anyway, the parameters can be put in a different .ini file and set
differently than for web-based PHP.

I'd rather use set_time_limit( ) if php is not running in safe mode.
I just want to mention that if you plan to send a personalised content
for each contat, you may want to use an temporary table where, at the
begining of the mailing process you want to implement, you prepare
your data (associate mail adress and other contact stuff with suitable
content) using php, then launch an other script tha just grab data
from this temporary table and send it, this will considerably minimise
exectime and load on your server ..
Adding a sent/not_sent flag to this temp table would let you resume
sending mails if some things goes wrong with your smtp for example ..

[NC]

Re: Using PHP for nightly backend tasks?

On Jul 17, 3:04 pm, Charles <landema...@gma il.comwrote:

>
I have to develop a script to be run nightly to go through
a database and send emails based on conditions. It's a large
database, and there are several thousands of emails to be
sent during the week everyday. The script will be run with
a cron job at midnight or so.
>
I was wondering if PHP is suitable for this

Absolutely, as long as you have a command-line interpreter on your
system. With PHP is executed from the command line, timeouts do not
apply; the script behaves as any other shell script would.

Cheers,
NC