email question

[Johnny26652]

hello mentors
I have a email program in asp. I was wondering if it is possible to automatically send email using asp and access. say for eg i have a event start date and end date. i want to setmyself a remider say 2 days before the end date send me an email saying your end date is approaching? is is feasible to do ?thanks in advance

[VGR]

yes it is feasible ;-)
I could show you some working code, but in PHP, so let's stay on the principles I use :
I include (or execute) a standard function at every session opening (for instance), so that my stats are computed, reminders are sent, subscriptions are closed in due time, etc
you could do the same

it's a matter of keeping in your DB a table "status" with the "last execution date" (YYYY-MM-DD) which is usually either yesterday or today.
If that date (read once persession, so no big time loss anyway) is <> (different) from today's date (your equivalent of date('Y-M-d') then execute atomically (or not) :
- kind-of lock status table
- execution of daily tasks
- update status table if success

You can reduce this into : (if you like low risks ;-)
- update status table anyway (this "locks out" other attempts that day)
- execution of daily tasks

the same principle applies to my monthly or yearly tasks (mainly stats aggregation)

[GrandSchtroumpf]

> I include (or execute) a standard function at every session opening (for instance)
That only works if you have enough traffic, i.e. at least one session per day.
A common solution is to use a cron job (or a windows task) that executes an arbitrary http request (e.g. http://www.mysite.com/dailytasks.asp).

[Johnny26652]

actually i am doing what you guys suggested. like once the page loads the page executes and check the db if that date is 20 days or something sends an email. i was wondering if there is any better way. what if no one loads the page? they should still receive the email right?

[VGR]

that's what the bearded red hat little thingy wrote ;-)

I agree that if you need regular execution of scripts/HTTP requests, it's better to use some kind of task scheduler. Being dissatisfied with the "AT" on windows, I designed my own. It's the "RobotOuaibe" that yu can find on www.edainworks.com, third-party tools, development section

I use it to send on a daily basis requests to compute stats on my sites, to update a database, to call netcraft/uptime, to generate a random new email signature out of my database, to parse my logfiles for extracting security alerts that are sent automatically to the ISPs etc