How to email all users with user-specific information. - php

Question

I've built a contest system for a website, how it works is a user logs in, submits a ballot based on a real life event (sale of a particular object), and then at the end of the month, a random ballot is chosen and the owner of that ballot is the winner.
I've been asked to create a script which will email all users in the database the current amount of ballots they have in the system.
My current login/registration system is a heavily edited version of HTML-Form-Guies Simple PHP Registration System.
I know the pseudo code for what I want to do.
Step by step, the method needed goes like this.
Call on EmailUsersTotalEntries, populates an array with all the users in the database, pick the first entry in the array, user 1, find the sum of the all the rows in the itemsold column with the userid 1. then send user one an email with the results of the select sum(itemsold) from ballots where userid = 1; to user 1. Then the loop goes to user 2 and does the same thing, until it has sent an email to every user in the database.
Here are a few of the methods that I have either written or that are from the login system that will be used to accomplish this. My only problem is I dont know how to make a loop so that it will start from user 1 and then keep going all the way to user 2, and I dont know how to query the database for the user_id of whatever user the database/loop is currently on.
Methods are as follows:
This is the main method, it will call sub methods to collect the users and then send the actual email. I'm not sure if TotalEntries should be an array or not
function EmailTotalEntries()
{
if(empty($_POST['email']))
{
$this->HandleError("Email is empty!");
return false;
}
$user_rec = array();
if(false === $this->GetUsers($user_rec))
{
return false;
}
**/* $TotalEntries = array(); */**
if(false === $this->GetTotalEntriesForEmail($user_rec, $TotalEntries)
{
return false;
}
//At this point, I have an array, user_rec, populated with all the data from my users table, and an array $TotalEntries that will have nothing since its trying to pull from user_rec, which usually is one user but right now is all of the users.
//This is where I know I should have already started the loop, so chosen the first element in user_rec, and applied the GetTotalEntriesForEmail method, then the SendUserEmail method, then gone to the top of the loop and gone to the second user_rec element and repeat.
if(false === $this->SendUsersEmail($user_rec, $TotalEntries))
{
return false;
}
return true;
}
This is the method that collects the users
function GetUsers(&$user_rec)
{
if(!$this->DBLogin())
{
$this->HandleError("Database login failed!");
return false;
}
$result = mysql_query("Select * from $this->tablename",$this->connection);
$user_rec = mysql_fetch_assoc($result);
return true;
}
Here is the method I wrote to get the TotalEntries for a user that is logged in (checking his control panel to see how many entries he has)
function GetTotalEntries()
{
if(!$this->CheckLogin())
{
$this->HandleError("Not logged in!");
return false;
}
$user_rec = array();
if(!$this->GetUserFromEmail($this->UserEmail(),$user_rec))
{
return false;
}
$qry = "SELECT SUM(itemsold) AS TotalEntries FROM entries WHERE user_id = '".$user_rec['id_user']."'";
$result = mysql_query($qry,$this->connection);
while($row = mysql_fetch_array($result))
{
echo $row['TotalEntries'];
}
}
And here is how I believe it needs to be adapted to work in the email.
function GetTotalEntriesForEmail($user_rec, &$TotalEntries)
{
if(!$this->DBLogin())
{
$this->HandleError("Database login failed!");
return false;
}
$qry = "SELECT SUM(itemsold) FROM entries WHERE user_id = '".$user_rec['id_user']."'"; //$user_rec['id_user'] should the be id of the user the loop is currently on.
$result = mysql_query($qry,$this->connection);
$TotalEntries = mysql_fetch_assoc($result);
return true;
}
Heres the actual email
function SendUsers($user_rec, $TotalBallots)
{
$email = $user_rec['email']; //should be the for the user the loop is currently on.
$mailer = new PHPMailer();
$mailer->CharSet = 'utf-8';
$mailer->AddAddress($email,$user_rec['name']); //user the loop is currently on.
$mailer->Subject = "Total Ballots to Date";
$mailer->From = $this->GetFromAddress();
$mailer->Body ="Hello ".$user_rec['name']."\r\n\r\n". //Same thing
"To date you have: "/* .$TotalBallots. */" ballots.\r\n" //Same thing
if(!$mailer->Send())
{
return false;
}
return true;
}
I'm not very good at PHP, and this whole thing is a learning experience for me, so help is greatly appreciated.
If I havent been clear, maybe giving an example in another language would be clearer, so heres what I want to do, but in java
for(x = 0; x <= user_rec.length; x++)
{
int ballots = getTotalEntriesForUser(x);
sendEmailToUser(ballots)
}
If I havent been clear enough, please let me know and I will try to clarify as best as possible.
How can I combine the above code with a loop that will send all users an email, one by one, each email unique to the user it is sent to?

Answer 1

Are your functions part of a class? You wouldn't necessarily need them to do this. Here's my recommendation, which you can turn into functions, or a class, if you want. Also, you may want to consider looking into, and using MySQLi, and taking advantage of the classes it uses. Again, all just my recommendations.
Without knowing your table structure, I'm just taking a guess at this.
$sql = mysql_query("SELECT u.*,
u.user_id AS user,
COALESCE(SUM(e.itemssold), 0) AS total_items
FROM users u
LEFT JOIN entries e ON e.user_id = u.user_id
GROUP BY u.user_id");
while($row = mysql_fetch_array($sql))
{
$user = $row['user'];
$email = $row['user_email'];
$items = $row['total_items'];
yourEmailFunction($email, $items);
}
This pulls information from your users table, and your entries table based on matching User ID's. It sets the User ID from the user table as user so you don't have to try and distinguish between the two later. To learn about the COALESCE function, read here. The while() function will loop through every user it pulls from that SQL statement.
This hasn't been tested in any way, but that's basically what you need. Just pass the User's email, and the total Items, and write your email function to send that info to that email address.
However, if you know your functions work properly, and want to use a for loop, such as the one you provided in Java, here's how you'd write it in PHP.
for($x = 0; $x <= count($user_rec); $x++)
{
$ballots = getTotalEntriesForUser($x);
sendEmailToUser($ballots);
}