Send email message for birthday - Let's do it

[hprod]

It would very nice to send automatic email to those who is his birthday today.
How can I do it?
Maybe it could be done as a mod?

Thanks!

[Valconeye]

i also think this would be a great mod!

[Daniel Hofverberg]

That shouldn't be too hard. I'm quite busy right now, but if no one else have helped you, I'd be happy to do it for you in a day or two - Just need a little time to look through the source files. I am reasonably experienced with PHP, I just haven't looked at the YaBB SE code a lot...

[Thomas]

I too would love this mod Daniel.

Looking forward to testing it.

/Thomas

[prod]

Does anyone did something like this...?
I hope...  
waiting...

[Daniel Hofverberg]

I'm sorry, I actually forgot all about this...  

I'll try to find some spare time to try and implement this - But I haven't looked through the source code too much yet, so I can't promise anything.

[hprod]

¡Thank you very much Daniel!
I wait patiently, I'm sure we will do it
Ciao

[Cerberus]

Thanks in advance and good luck!

[maime]

yeah i would like that one too, with the option to make a personalized text ofcourse

that would be a great mod ( for the simple machine aswell

[Ayeka]

There is one problem with this mod.  Is there anyway to have a scheduled event?  The actual mod would be easy enough to write:

if today=member[birthday] then
 sendemail(member)

But how would it run?  You would need some sort of scheduling agent.

I suppose you could check the time everytime the forum is accessed, but you have two problems:

1)  what if the forum isn't checked during your set time frame?
 a)  you could set the frame to an hour, or two hours, but that introduces another problem

2)  what if the form is accessed multiple times during the time frame?
 a)  then you would be sending multiple emails.
 b)  an answer to this might be to expand the members table to have  a flag birthdaySentEmail = Yes|No, but that would also bring us back to problem number 1.

Any suggestions?

[Ayeka]

Try this on for size.  You'll have to make a few minor modifications, but it should do the trick.  I have this at my site and it seems to be working fine.

Things to change:
include_once ("./community/Settings.php");
$siteurl = 'http://www.mysite.com';
$boardurl = 'http://www.mysite.com/community/index.php'; (currently mine is community)
$boardname = 'Insert the name of your comminuty here';
$db_server = 'localhost';
$db_name = 'yabbse';
$db_user = 'username';
$db_pass = 'password';

         include_once ("./community/Sources/Subs.php");

Code Select Expand


<?php

include_once("./community/Settings.php");
$siteurl = '';
$bbsurl = '';
$boardname = '';

mysql_connect ($db_server, $db_user, $db_pass);
mysql_select_db ($db_name);

$modSettings = array();
$request = mysql_query("SELECT variable,value FROM {$db_prefix}settings WHERE (variable != 'agreement')") or database_error(__FILE__, __LINE__);
while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($request))
   $modSettings[$row['variable']] = $row['value'];

$today = date ('Y-m-d');
$request1 = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM {$db_prefix}members;") or mysql_error();
$counter =0;

while ($result = mysql_fetch_assoc($request1))
{
   $EmailArray[$counter] = $result['emailAddress'];
   $counter ++;

   if (substr($result['birthdate'],5) == substr($today,5))
   {
      $birthyear = substr($result['birthdate'],0,4);
      $ageth = substr($today , 0, 4) - $birthyear;
      $tempdate = mktime (0,0,0,1,$ageth,2000);
      $asuf = date("S", $tempdate);
      $subject1 = 'Happy Birthday!';
      $message1 = 'Happy birthday to you<br>
         Happy birthday to you<br>
         Happy birthday dear ' . $result['memberName'] . '<br>
         Happy birthday to you!<br>
         <br>';
         if ($birthyear <>'0000')
            $message1 = $message1 . 'Have a happy ' . $ageth . $asuf . ' year and many more!<br>';
         else
            $message1 = $message1 . 'Have another happy year and many more!<br><br>';
      $message1 = $message1 . 'Regards from the ' . $boardname . ' community team.<br>
            <a href="' . $bbsurl . '">' . $boardname . '</a>';
      if ($result['emailAddress'] <> '')
      {
         echo 'Sending mail for ' . $result['emailAddress'] . '<br>';
         include_once ("./community/Sources/Subs.php");
         sendmail ($result['emailAddress'], $subject1, $message1);
      }
   }
}
?>


If you have any problems please let me know.

Ohh, before I forget, you also need to set up a scheduled task. in windows you can do this:

Run the scheduled tasks manager, and add the following command:

D:\php4\php D:\siteroot\birthday.php

Let it run every night.  I think Unix and Windows NT/2000 has a simular command called 'at', I'm not sure of the syntax for Unix, but Windows 2000 is:

at "02:00" /EVERY:"Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday" "D:\php4\php D:\siteroot\birthday.php"

[prod]

WOWOWOW
Ayeka!!! Thanks a lot!! I received your IM right now!
and I'm going to test the mod now!!!

Thanks again!!!!!!!!!!

[Daniel Hofverberg]

The problem with that solution is that many web hosts don't allow their customers to add scheduled tasks (cronjobs in Unix/Linux).

It's an excellent solution if your web host does support cronjobs, but for those of us whose web hosts doesn't offer that, it's a lot more complicated...  

[prod]

YEAHHH!!!
It works like a CHARM!!!!

THANKS AGAIN
THANKS A LOT!!!

[Ayeka]

I'm sorry, I wasn't thinking about that, since I run my own server I guess it's a little too easy for me to whip stuff up like this ...