Scheduling Email Notifications

Question

I'm trying to figure out a good solution for sending email notifications based on user preference. Users can set up notifications to come

• Everytime the event occurs
• Once an hour
• Once a day
• Once a week

Would the best way to do this be to set up a crontab that runs a .php every minute checking to see if anything needs to be sent out? Is there another way/more efficient way to schedule something like this?

Answer 1

I'd say the following:

• In case the email should be sent everytime the event occurs, then you don't need any crontab. Just send the email when the event occur.
• Run a crontab once an hour. This crontab will fetch all events from the last hour, and send an email with all these events to the users requesting a hourly email.
• Do the same once a day and once a week for users with daily and weekly emails preferences.