Hi Guys,

i'm implementing a feature for a REST webapp. I would like to send an email to all the Members of a certain group based on some logic. This has to happen every day so i need cronjobs. It is an app for an hospital where people with OCD can practise their exercises at home. Based on their therapy they need to do a certain amount of exercises a week. So i would like to send them email reminders. i can hardly find any examples so i hope you guys could help me. Please let me know if this is the right way to do this:

here's my EmailTask.

class EmailTask extends BuildTask {
 
    protected $title = 'Email patients';
    protected $description = 'A task that emails patients exercises';
    protected $enabled = true;
 
    function run($request) {
        Patient_Controller::init();
    }
}

Here's the controller i'am calling:

class Patient_Controller extends Controller {
	private static $allowed_actions = array('email');
	
	public function email() {
		$email = new Email();
		$email->setTo($this->Email); 
	    $email->setSubject('test');
	    $email->setFrom('no_reply@mysite.com'); 
	    $email->setTemplate('EmailReminder');
		$email->send();
	}
}

i keep getting this error: [Strict Notice] Non-static method Patient_Controller::email() should not be called statically, assuming $this from incompatible context.

The other question is, do i need to put the logic in my buildtask (looping over al the patients and send them their email) or is this the right way to do it?

Hi Luuk,

To get rid of the error just declare your email function static:

public static function email() {
...

Hi Luuk,

You shouldn't need to add your email logic to a controller, you should be able to run the whole thing in the build task itself. Is there a particular reason you are using the controller outside of your question?

I would probably just add the Member::get() loop to the build task, then you should be able to add the email send code inside that loop, without calling a controller.

Just bear in mind that if your loop takes longer than a minute and you have set the cron to run every minuite then you might get some bad side effects (multiple overlapping DB connections for example).

Also, have you looked at the crontask module? I have used it a few times, it is quite nice: https://github.com/silverstripe-labs/silverstripe-crontask

Cheers,

Mo

Just thought what I was saying might be clearer if I wrote the code down. As far as I am aware, if you are just sending the email using cron (via your build task) and the controller isn't needed for anything else, you should be able to use:

class EmailTask extends BuildTask {
 
    protected $title = 'Email patients';
    protected $description = 'A task that emails patients exercises';
    protected $enabled = true;
 
    function run($request) {
        $members = Member::get();

        foreach($members as $member) {
            $email = new Email();
            $email->setTo($member->Email); 
            $email->setSubject('test');
            $email->setFrom('no_reply@mysite.com'); 
            $email->setTemplate('EmailReminder');
            $email->send();

            // Use this if you want to log that the message was sent
            echo "<p>Email sent to {$member->Email}</p>";
        }
    }
}

Hope that makes sense?

Mo

Thank you very much, i will test this asap!