Send email at the end of each month

Question

I have a user subscription system, I need to send a notification every end of month warning that the subscription is coming due, the problem is that I don’t know how to make this script run automatically without me having to access a particular page for it to run, I will try to give an example in a simplistic way:

Let’s assume I want to send this email on October 2nd, so I would do like this:

$data_programada = '02/10/2018';
if(date('d/m/Y') == $data_programada) {

    mail('[email protected]','vencimento','mensagem de vencimento');

}

the problem is that this email will only be sent if I access the page that contains this script, I need you to do it automatically

Answer 1

What you want is a Cronjob: What are CRON JOBS and how to use them with PHP

This example uses the Unix/linux cron mechanism, which is the most common to use, but there are mechanisms that integrate directly into the language, as is the case of Quartz for Java, but I don’t know any of this for PHP.

My tip: Use linux cron :)

Complementing the answer:

You need to add a cron entry to your system user (linux):

Step 1: Create the file that will be executed: helloworld.php file

<?php

echo 'Hello world';

?>

Step 2: Start the change in the system cron file using the 'crontab -e' command. This command will open the cron file using the default editor, probably vim

Step 3: Add the desired cron entry with the file that was created. In this example I will put to run every first day of the month at 9 am:

0 9 1 * * php -f /home/murilo/meu_php/helloworld.php > /dev/null 2>&1

Description:

0 9 1 * * -> Expressão cron para executar em todo primeiro dia do mes as 9 da manhã (para mais exemplos acesse https://crontab-generator.org/)

php -f /home/murilo/meu_php/helloworld.php -> Comando a ser executado

> /dev/null 2>&1 -> Direcionando sysouts para /dev/null

Step 4: Save the file and ready, it is configured !

To perform exactly at the end of the month is a little more complicated, as the months have different end days (can end on 28, 29, 30 or 31) the expression cron gets a little more complicated. The easiest way I found was to create more than one cron entry to cover the different cases.

Behold:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6139189/cron-job-to-run-on-the-last-day-of-the-month

https://blog.nexcess.net/2013/05/09/cron-job-for-the-last-day-of-the-month/