Alpha Software Mobile Development Tools:   Alpha Anywhere    |   Alpha TransForm subscribe to our YouTube Channel  Follow Us on LinkedIn  Follow Us on Twitter  Follow Us on Facebook
Devcon 2020 Goes Virtual! LEARN MORE >

Announcement

Collapse

The Alpha Software Forum Participation Guidelines

The Alpha Software Forum is a free forum created for Alpha Software Developer Community to ask for help, exchange ideas, and share solutions. Alpha Software strives to create an environment where all members of the community can feel safe to participate. In order to ensure the Alpha Software Forum is a place where all feel welcome, forum participants are expected to behave as follows:
  • Be professional in your conduct
  • Be kind to others
  • Be constructive when giving feedback
  • Be open to new ideas and suggestions
  • Stay on topic


Be sure all comments and threads you post are respectful. Posts that contain any of the following content will be considered a violation of your agreement as a member of the Alpha Software Forum Community and will be moderated:
  • Spam.
  • Vulgar language.
  • Quotes from private conversations without permission, including pricing and other sales related discussions.
  • Personal attacks, insults, or subtle put-downs.
  • Harassment, bullying, threatening, mocking, shaming, or deriding anyone.
  • Sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, ableist, or otherwise discriminatory jokes and language.
  • Sexually explicit or violent material, links, or language.
  • Pirated, hacked, or copyright-infringing material.
  • Encouraging of others to engage in the above behaviors.


If a thread or post is found to contain any of the content outlined above, a moderator may choose to take one of the following actions:
  • Remove the Post or Thread - the content is removed from the forum.
  • Place the User in Moderation - all posts and new threads must be approved by a moderator before they are posted.
  • Temporarily Ban the User - user is banned from forum for a period of time.
  • Permanently Ban the User - user is permanently banned from the forum.


Moderators may also rename posts and threads if they are too generic or do not property reflect the content.

Moderators may move threads if they have been posted in the incorrect forum.

Threads/Posts questioning specific moderator decisions or actions (such as "why was a user banned?") are not allowed and will be removed.

The owners of Alpha Software Corporation (Forum Owner) reserve the right to remove, edit, move, or close any thread for any reason; or ban any forum member without notice, reason, or explanation.

Community members are encouraged to click the "Report Post" icon in the lower left of a given post if they feel the post is in violation of the rules. This will alert the Moderators to take a look.

Alpha Software Corporation may amend the guidelines from time to time and may also vary the procedures it sets out where appropriate in a particular case. Your agreement to comply with the guidelines will be deemed agreement to any changes to it.



Bonus TIPS for Successful Posting

Try a Search First
It is highly recommended that a Search be done on your topic before posting, as many questions have been answered in prior posts. As with any search engine, the shorter the search term, the more "hits" will be returned, but the more specific the search term is, the greater the relevance of those "hits". Searching for "table" might well return every message on the board while "tablesum" would greatly restrict the number of messages returned.

When you do post
First, make sure you are posting your question in the correct forum. For example, if you post an issue regarding Desktop applications on the Mobile & Browser Applications board , not only will your question not be seen by the appropriate audience, it may also be removed or relocated.

The more detail you provide about your problem or question, the more likely someone is to understand your request and be able to help. A sample database with a minimum of records (and its support files, zipped together) will make it much easier to diagnose issues with your application. Screen shots of error messages are especially helpful.

When explaining how to reproduce your problem, please be as detailed as possible. Describe every step, click-by-click and keypress-by-keypress. Otherwise when others try to duplicate your problem, they may do something slightly different and end up with different results.

A note about attachments
You may only attach one file to each message. Attachment file size is limited to 2MB. If you need to include several files, you may do so by zipping them into a single archive.

If you forgot to attach your files to your post, please do NOT create a new thread. Instead, reply to your original message and attach the file there.

When attaching screen shots, it is best to attach an image file (.BMP, .JPG, .GIF, .PNG, etc.) or a zip file of several images, as opposed to a Word document containing the screen shots. Because Word documents are prone to viruses, many message board users will not open your Word file, therefore limiting their ability to help you.

Similarly, if you are uploading a zipped archive, you should simply create a .ZIP file and not a self-extracting .EXE as many users will not run your EXE file.
See more
See less

How can you "batch-send" a bunch of emails from a database?

Collapse
X
Collapse
 
  • Page of 1
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts
Previous template Next
    #1

    How can you "batch-send" a bunch of emails from a database?

    I'm building a web app that needs to send emails to multiple addresses at once. Supposing I have a table with names, email addresses etc., how would I go about sending those at once using my SMTP credentials? Note: this is NOT an attempt to spam people, I just need to keep folks who have entered their email addresses into my program informed.

    I'm new to A5 (v.11) and even newer to xBasic, but since there is no good manual or help regarding this question, I need to post it here and hope for some guidance.

    Thanks!
    Tags: None
    #2
    Re: How can you "batch-send" a bunch of emails from a database?

    One thing to keep in mind... the nature of SMTP (outbound email) makes it a less than great idea to send emails in "batches"... You can send a zillion of them! But you need to send them one at a time. Another thing to consider - is it email being used as an instant message? or does it matter if it gets there a few minutes from now? If it's the latter case - then look into SendMail.com They maintain the service and provide an API for you to send outbound emails to. My stuff requires more - quick send type of stuff, so I use an outbound relay service.

    Bottom line - even if I were using C++, VS2010, or Delphi - you still send emails one at a time - just a big long line of them.

    Comment

      #3
      Re: How can you "batch-send" a bunch of emails from a database?

      My message may have been a bit misleading. What I'm looking for is how to scan a table with email addresses and send emails out one by one via SMTP. There won't be that many of them (20-30 at a time) so Sendmail.com would be a sledgehammer to a nail.

      I looked at a few videos re: sending emails through A5, and although my eyes glazed over at times, I was left with the impression that this is possible from within A5, using it's facilities. The example shows sending an email from a form by clicking "Send Email" button. I would like to do something similar except without that kind one-by-one user interface, but rather pointing the code to a table and have it go down row by row and send emails for each address found in the row.

      My background is VFP programming, and since I know it inside and out I could do this in my sleep with that tool. A5 is different, though, since I have to learn it's mindset, approach, UI, programming language, wizards/genies, quirks, etc.

      Comment

        #4
        Re: How can you "batch-send" a bunch of emails from a database?

        You can refer to http://news.alphasoftware.com/v11pre...v11.htm#Dialog Video #22.

        It is sending emails through Action Script & use Dialog Repeating sections for looping through Table fields and sending Email to multiple people. Also refer to Video # D20 & D6.

        Comment

          #5
          Re: How can you "batch-send" a bunch of emails from a database?

          Hi nlights

          I am having the same goal. Did you find a good solution?

          Skyinwv

          Comment

            #6
            Re: How can you "batch-send" a bunch of emails from a database?

            Sending email is not so difficult that you need to use an Alpha genie.

            - get your list of email addresses from the database in to a CRLF delimited string. I don't know if you are using DBF or SQL. If SQL, use ToPropertyArray function or the ToString function to get your list.
            - get parameters for the smtp like Server, Username, Password, Port, etc.
            - get other email parameters like subject and message
            - use email_smtp_open() to open a connection
            - loop through each email in the list, sending each email using email_smtp_send()
            - close the smtp using email_smtp_close()

            You can also use the newer function for email_send_sparkpost() function. There are instructions for use in the Alpha documentation. You would need a Sparkpost.com account to do this.
            Steve Wood
            See my profile on IADN

            Comment

              #7
              Re: How can you "batch-send" a bunch of emails from a database?

              Originally posted by Steve Wood View Post
              Sending email is not so difficult that you need to use an Alpha genie.

              - get your list of email addresses from the database in to a CRLF delimited string. I don't know if you are using DBF or SQL. If SQL, use ToPropertyArray function or the ToString function to get your list.
              - get parameters for the smtp like Server, Username, Password, Port, etc.
              - get other email parameters like subject and message
              - use email_smtp_open() to open a connection
              - loop through each email in the list, sending each email using email_smtp_send()
              - close the smtp using email_smtp_close()

              You can also use the newer function for email_send_sparkpost() function. There are instructions for use in the Alpha documentation. You would need a Sparkpost.com account to do this.

              Comment

                #8
                Re: How can you "batch-send" a bunch of emails from a database?

                Thanks Steve! That was quick!

                I'm using a5v11, can I give you more info on what I am trying to do?

                I have 50 new records every week from participants in our workshop. I want to create a Certificate of Attendance and send it out to them by email. The Certificate must have the individual's name printed on them. So far I have generated the certificate in the body of the email. That part is working fine. I'm able to send out one at a time. I'd like to push a button for them to send automatically, one certificate to one email.

                I'm not sure if your suggestion above would do this?

                Thanks!

                Sky

                Comment

                Previous template Next
                Working...
                X