Stop foreach Loop for limited time span in php

Question

I am sending emails to users using sendgrid email delivery service.

Below is my code, which send emails to all users of a website.

foreach($resident_emails as $email){
     $this->load->model('email_model');
     $this->load->model('preferences_model');
     $user_email = $email->email;
     $admin_email = $from_email;
     $email_row = array('from_email'=>$admin_email,'from_name'=>$from_name,'message'=>$newsletter,'subject'=>$subject);
     $arr_var = array('subject'=>$subject,'message'=>$newsletter);
     $this->email_model->sendEmail($user_email,$email_row,$arr_var);
 }

Now for example i have to send email to more than 200 users.

Problem

But problem is that, only 10 emails are delivered, and for remaning i received ' FAILED ' status.

Question

My question is, how can i stop the execution of foreach loop for 10 seconds or more, and then after certain time, next 10 emails sent, and so on?

Answer 1

PHP provide in-built function sleep():

foreach($resident_emails as $email){
     $this->load->model('email_model');
     $this->load->model('preferences_model');
     $user_email = $email->email;
     $admin_email = $from_email;
     $email_row = array('from_email'=>$admin_email,'from_name'=>$from_name,'message'=>$newsletter,'subject'=>$subject);
     $arr_var = array('subject'=>$subject,'message'=>$newsletter);
     $this->email_model->sendEmail($user_email,$email_row,$arr_var);
     sleep(10);
 }

Answer 2

If you really want to wait 10 seconds before re-sending a couple of more emails, you can use the sleep-function provided by php:

$i = 0;
foreach($resident_emails as $email){
    $this->load->model('email_model');
    $this->load->model('preferences_model');
    $user_email = $email->email;
    $admin_email = $from_email;
    $email_row = array('from_email'=>$admin_email,'from_name'=>$from_name,'message'=>$newsletter,'subject'=>$subject);
    $arr_var = array('subject'=>$subject,'message'=>$newsletter);
    $this->email_model->sendEmail($user_email,$email_row,$arr_var);
    $i++;

    // check if this is the nth iteration
    if($i == 10) {
        $i = 0;
        sleep(10);
    }
}

In the above example, we send 10 emails. On the next iteration, we wait 10 seconds before resending another 10 mails... and so on.

I highly doubt that this will solve your problem, though. Keep in mind that always waiting for 10 seconds raises the execution time.