How to send emails using PHPMailer in the background?

Question

PHPMailers is doing a fine job in sending emails from a gmail account. But it takes quite a bit of time, and the page won't show the response until the email has been sent. Any ways to send the email in the background so that I can provide a better user experience to the user? Thanks!

Answer 1

The use of an email queue and php exec() is one of the best ways.

It will trigger when needed (avoiding the use of CRONs), it's fast because it is called backgrounded, and immediate.

1. Email queue. Take all fields in a table's MySQL with an insert, something like:

$queryIN="INSERT INTO email_queue (date,subject,body,destination,idle) values (...)";
mysql_query($queryIN);

That's important because you will need an independent background process, so also it's a good idea for registering and auditing all outgoing emails.

2. PHP exec(). After inserting in MySQL is time to call as external execution:

exec("wget -qO- http://example.com/index.php?process_email_queue=1 &> /dev/null &");

• Take note, options from wget -q0- and &> ... /dev/null & are needed to suppress output and call as a background process.

3. Same script file index.php or other for processing call of a queue:

This way, it will call our index.php (you can use other name file), and process outgoing:

if ($_GET['process_email_queue']==1) { ...code for sending idle emails queue...  }

Perhaps you have to touch some php.ini options for exec(), is not a big deal.

Once everything is running correctly, you will offer a better web navigation and email handling for fast response and zero waits.

In some cases you will pass from waiting from a direct email 2.60 secs to queue-exec-background 0.024 secs, which is a speed improvement of 11 times faster.