Fire an automated email when database updated?

Question

I am trying to figure out the best way to send an automated email to a customer when we update our database with "frames in" i'm thinking javascript & php but don't really know how to implement as a nobo!?

My HTML Form showing checkbox that needs to fire email (only partially shown due to length)

<form action="<?php echo $editFormAction; ?>" name="form" method="POST"> 
<input name="frame_in" type="checkbox" id="long_tiny" value="yes" <?php if (!(strcmp($row_Recordset1['frame_in'],"yes"))) {echo "checked=\"checked\"";} ?> />
<input type="hidden" name="MM_update" value="form">
</form>

The php mail script (Not sure if completely correct)

$mailTo = $row_customer['email'];
$subject = 'Your Frames Now in!!';
$cName = $row_Recordset2['cName'];
$jobRef = $row_Recordset2['customer_ref'];
$ourRef = $row_Recordset2['our_ref'];
$jobTotal = $row_recordset2['amount'];
mail($mailTo, $subject,
$cName your job Ref: $jobref is now in
<br>
<h2>Details:</h2>
<p>Our ref: $ourRef<br>
Customer Ref: $jobref<br>
Job total: $jobtotal</p>
); 

I really don't know how to tie it all together I'm guessing there would need to be error handling as not every customer has an email (But the error doesn't need to be shown)

Answer 1

$mailTo = $row_customer['email'];
$subject = 'Your Frames Now in!!';
$cName = $row_Recordset2['cName'];
$jobRef = $row_Recordset2['customer_ref'];
$ourRef = $row_Recordset2['our_ref'];
$jobTotal = $row_recordset2['amount'];
$headers  = 'MIME-Version: 1.0' . "\r\n";
$headers .= 'Content-type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1' . "\r\n";
$message = "$cName your job Ref: $jobref is now in
<br>
<h2>Details:</h2>
<p>Our ref: $ourRef<br>
Customer Ref: $jobref<br>
Job total: $jobtotal</p>";
if($_POST['frame_in'] == "yes") {
mail($mailTo, $subject,$message, $headers); 
}

Answer 2

This is a very broad question. What you need to do is:

1. Process the form in $editFormAction
2. If $_POST['frame_in'] is set, do the following:
   • Get all customers
   • Send an email to the ones with an e-mail address
3. Publish a warning on your site for logged-in users (or in general...) that do not have an email address registered.

No aditional javascript needed.

Where exactly are you stuck?

Answer 3

You could try a database trigger that sends an email. The database itself would be sending out the e-mail, and would not involve php at all. This would also be more inclusive, as it would send an email regardless or who/what changes the field, including changes from PhpMyAdmin, or other webpages/scripts.

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/triggers.html

http://forums.mysql.com/read.php?99,33635,33635#msg-33635

This may be limited depending on your hosting environment. If you are using shared hosting, odds are you cannot utilize triggers for security reasons.