Send Me An Email Of Birthdays

[tomyknoker]

I'm not sure how this would work automatically but I was wondering how I can send myself an email say 2 weeks before a member in my database is about to have a birthday? I'm assuming the query would need to be running constantly so would it be possible?

[boxxertrumps]

Implausible, or at least, not a good idea.

you cant have one script running forever. the server would end up crashing.

[tomyknoker]

No I'll set up the script and then run it as a cron job, that should work I think...

[thetestingsite]

Cron would work (or scheduled tasks in a Windows environment), although it is not recommended (due to it being a resource hog). However, if you would like something like this, the script could be something similar to this:

bday.php

<?php
$to = "me@mydomain.com"; //your email address
$subject = "Member's birthdays"; //subject of email

include('dbconnect.php');
$year = date('Y');
$month = date('m');

$results = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM `table` WHERE `birthday` LIKE '$year-$month%'");

if (mysql_num_rows($results) < 1) {
die('There are no members with birthdays this month');
}

else {

  while ($qry = mysql_fetch_array($results)) {
      if (strtotime($qry['birthday']) <= (time() + 86400*14)) {
         $bdays[] = Array($qry['Name'] => $qry['birthday']);
      }
  }

$message = 'Below is a list of the members and their birthdays that are coming up in the next couple of weeks. \r\n';

$message .= 'The birthdays are as follows: \r\n';
$message .= '-----------------------------------------\r\n\r\n';

foreach ($bdays as $name => $bdate) {
   $message .= 'Name (Birthday): '.$name.' ('.$bdate.') \r\n';
}

$from = "From: PHP Script <noreply@mydomain.com";

mail($to, $subject, $message, $from);
}
?>

Note: not tested, but should work with little modification.

Hope this helps.

[tomyknoker]

I had a quick question when I am doing includes, is there any difference i doint them like this include

include 'dbconnect.php'; 

or like this

include('dbconnect.php'); 

[thetestingsite]

I don't think that it matters, I've just always done include('somefile.txt'); as compared to your way above. I believe they all work the same, but then again I'm not 100% sure. You may want to look at the php.net website and look for this.

Hope this helps.

[tomyknoker]

It said there was an error on line 23, I change the names to be what's in my database columns yea?

         $bdays[] = $qry['FirstName'] => $qry['DateOfBirth']; 

[thetestingsite]

Try this:

$bdays[] = Array($qry['FirstName'] => $qry['DateOfBirth']);

Then in the code above the while statement, get rid of this:

$bdays = Array();

Hope this helps.

[tomyknoker]

Cool, well it ran and the result was "There are no members with birthdays this month", but there are about 1000 members so I find that hard to believe... But also on my other birthday post in this forum, no matter what month I change it too it tells me there aren't any bdays... Any ideas?

[thetestingsite]

What's the link to the other post? Also, I just made that script when I posted it, so it is not tested. Just a quick question, how is the birthdate field formed? (Datetime, text, timestamp, etc?). This could be why you are not getting results because it is searching for any birthdays like this:

2007-03*

2007 is the year, 03 is the month (for March), and * is the wildcard