How to send email to emails generated in while loop with specific row information?

Question

I am pulling email addresses from a database whose FEE1 (owed) is less than their SESSION1 (paid) ie they owe. I then want to subtract the two to get a figure for how much they owe and email this information to them.

My problem is everyone who owes is receiving everyone else's email ie EMAIL1 receives EMAIL1 and EMAIL2's information.

I am convinced the problem is my IF() statement. I have searched and found that I may need to use a FOREACH() statement but I have used it incorrectly and had the information repeated multiple times per email sent. PLEASE HELP a novice my code goes something like this...

while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($select)){ /*start while loop*/
    $amount = $row['fee1'] - $row['session1'];
    $name = $row['name'];
    $surname = $row['surname'];
    $pname = $row['parentsname'];
    $psname = $row['parentname'];

    if ($row['session1'] < $row['fee1']){ /*start if owe*/
        $to      = $row['email'];
        $subject = 'Payment Reminder TEST!!!';
        $message = "Hello $pname $psname, \n\nAmount Owed For Session 1: £ $amount\nChilds Name: $name $surname\n\n".$message;
        $headers = 'From: creditcontrol@s.org.uk' . "\r\n" .
        'X-Mailer: PHP/' . phpversion();

        mail($to, $subject, $message, $headers);
    } /*end if owe*/
} /*end while loop*/

Answer 1

Look at this line:

$message = "Hello $pname $psname, \n\nAmount Owed For Session 1: £ $amount\nChilds Name: $name $surname\n\n".$message;

Spot the mistake?

Clue: your adding the $message to the existing $message - look at the end of the line.

So your loop runs and you set $message to equal "Hello..." then on the next run through the loop you set the $message to equal "Hello..." and the previous contents of $message so now there's two messages in $message , and this will go on and on for every iteration.

Simply remove . $message . $message from the end.

Answer 2

Unrelated to your problem but you could also optimize your loop by adding the needed condition in your SELECT statement so that "if ($row['session1'] < $row['fee1']){ / start if owe /" is part of the SELECT and not your loop. That way you won't have to iterate over your complete data set, and the IF becomes redundant.