Massmailing without timeout

[Sleidia]

Hello,

I've created a nice mailing list utility in PHP, but the only one problem I have is that the use of the mail() function causes timeouts when sending a large quantity of emails to my registered members.

Is there a code sample somewhere I could use so that I won't experience timeouts anymore?

Or at least, could someone tell me what should I use in replacement of the mail() function?

Is there another solution ( ie: pausing every 500 mails, etc )?

Thanks a lot for helping.
Have a nice day.

 

[btaber]

no matter how you do it, there is still a limit on the maximum execute time within the php.ini, you would need to change that.

max_execution_time = 30 ; Maximum execution time of each script, in seconds

 

[Sleidia]

Thanks btaber,

Unfortunately, I've already done that before and this won't be enough. I believe there are more efficient ways to send large chunks of emails.

Perhaps, using the system() functions with sendmail commands ??

 

[btaber]

personally, I would use perl to do this, since timeout is not an issue....

 

[BB101]

set_time_limit(0); solves all problems with timeouts... as long as your server supports it!

--BB

 

[Sleidia]

I've just found a tutorial explaining how to do mass mailing in the background :

http://www.phpfreaks.com/tutorials/71/0.php

 

[DRJ478]

There are many ways to do this - some are combinations of server and client side technologies.
For example:
A php script that works through the addresses, n at a time, and keeps count with a session. The produced HTML has Javascript code (as long as more mails are to be sent) which refreshed the page.
Also, PHP as a command line interpreter has no timeout issues.