rag05

Hello all,

I’m developing a site using ASP, but I’m sort of new with this. One of the things this site should have is a “mailing list.” It should work like this:

- People will register by providing their e-mail address and other information. This information will be stored in a DB
- They will receive an e-mail right after they register, and one e-mail per day for the following ten days.

Now, I have no problem with the first e-mail, since that will be triggered by a push of a button. My problem starts with the last part… how do I send the 10 daily e-mail messages?

As I said before, I’m quite new to ASP and I’ve never done something like this before. (The server runs Windows 2000 Adv. Server and I also use MS SQL Server 2000)

Thank you very much for your help.

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coldDeath

I've never used ASP. But heres a concept (sorry if there is a better way to do it)

Find a function that will display the date and time. (google will help you finding this function)
Compare the time to see if an email needs sending

Pseudo-code:
IF time.get() == my_time_to_send_email THEN sendemail()

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rag05

Thanx for your reply coldDeath,

The problem with this is: who (or what) would trigger that function? It needs to be some sort of "unattended" mailing list. (i.e. the "system" goes on its own and retrieves the list of e-mails from the DB and sends the e-mail).

Everything I've done so far in ASP, has been triggered by pressing a button, selecting from a list, etc.

Thanx for your help.

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There are only two kinds of programming languages:
those people always bitch about and those nobody uses.
-- Bjarne Stroustrup

Ghost

So basically you are saying you want to run a service? I don't believe that ASP has the ability thou ASP.NET does to be an application and not just a script, what you are looking to do I believe is say around 12:00 am (midnight) run this process of capturing emails and send them a message, at the same time. That is not done with a button or user action, I do not think can be done in ASP. Can you do ASP.NET?

rag05

Hello Ghost,

You've got it right, that's what I want to do.

However, at this point, ASP is all I can use.

Is there any other type of "external service" that I could use to do this in ASP?

Thanx for your help

__________________
There are only two kinds of programming languages:
those people always bitch about and those nobody uses.
-- Bjarne Stroustrup

DaWei

Write your script and run it with a task scheduler (like a cron job). No need to make it its own freakin' service.

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Ghost

You could do what DaWei is suggesting and seeing how you cannot run asp.net I would say that is your best bet. But like most things the more steps there are the more likely it is to have an issue or two. Hope the best to you.

Dameon

Having the script mantain its own schedule isn't great advice. Registering a service for the purpose is just plain silly. I fully agree with DaWei.Your host should offer some sort of cron-like facility, running on Windows, *nix, or otherwise.

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