Author: Zbigniew Szalbot Date: To: Chris Lightfoot, exim-users Subject: Re: [exim] can mail be sent by dropping mail files into exim queue
Hi there again,
On 26 May 2006 at 16:09, Chris Lightfoot wrote:
> Of course, PHP has a built-in function for sending mail by
> SMTP; it's a fertile source of security holes in
> poorly-written code, but is there a good reason you
> couldn't use that directly in this case?
OK, sorry I have misunderstood you! Yes, of course the php script could be used to send
emails by SMTP. I know how to do that and it is no big deal but... having said that I must add
that php is not the best tool for the job. More than with security I am concerned with the
speed or if you prefer slowness of such operation. We send about 15,5K messages per day
(as of now) and this number is growing daily. We once had a php script that generated
emails and sent them via SMTP but it was so slow that it would take long hours to send those
15,5K messages. Whereas now php writes emails to HD within a few minutes and we are
done. The rest is up to MTA. Also, because of that solution we cut by half the whole SMTP
operation. I mean the transaction from php script to MTA is not needed, we only need the
MTA to send mail to the world.
I guess I may be biased against built-in SMTP support in php and perhaps it is possible to
write a php script that works fast. Our initial experience was so discouraging that we gave up
on it. I am also considering using a custom java-based application using SMTP-to-MTA route
which I have seen performing very well.
Thank you once again for you help! I really appreciate it.
