TOPIC: [Partly Solved] How to get reminders to work?

I'm having difficulty getting reminders to work, so I thought I'd poll the collective wisdom of the group.

I did a clean install of Joomla 2.5.14. I added only the DTRegister component and the eventlink module.

I created an event for the 30th of August. I created 5 reminders, one for each day leading to the event, but did not select my created event, but left the reminder for ALL events.

I added a cron job that runs php on the cron.php script. (I can also run the script manually from a telnet session, but not sure if that gets all the includes I need - I'm not a php developer)

I added echo "something" statements (where something reflects the location in the script) to show the progress of the script. That gets emailed to me when the script runs, since cron is setup to email me output.

So far, I get no reminders. I'm hoping someone can help me figure out what I've not done right in order to get this feature to work.

Thanks in advance for any ideas....

With some help, I've been debugging the cron.php script. Here's what I found out:

If the script does not extend the JApplicationCli class, but is modified to

1) instantiate the Updatecron class directly
2) comment out the call to out ("$this->out($email)")
3) call the execute() function directly

The script starts producing emails as expected.

Below is the script. Please note that there are some echo statements that are for debug/trace that should be removed if you use this. I've highlighted the changes I've made.

<?php

// Make sure we're being called from the command line, not a web interface
if (array_key_exists('REQUEST_METHOD', $_SERVER)) die();
echo "DTRegister Script\n";


// Set flag that this is a parent file.
define('_JEXEC', 1);
define('DS', DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR);

error_reporting(E_ALL | E_NOTICE);
ini_set('display_errors', 1);
global $mainframe ;
class Climainframe {

function isAdmin() {

return true ;
}
}
$mainframe = new Climainframe();
chdir(dirname(__FILE__));
// Load system defines
chdir("../../");
if (file_exists(dirname(dirname(dirname(__FILE__))) . '/defines.php'))
{
require_once dirname(dirname(dirname(__FILE__))) . '/defines.php';
}

if (!defined('_JDEFINES'))
{

define('JPATH_BASE', getcwd());
require_once JPATH_BASE . '/includes/defines.php';
}
require_once JPATH_BASE.'/includes/framework.php';
require_once JPATH_BASE.'/includes/application.php';
require_once JPATH_LIBRARIES . '/import.php';
require_once JPATH_LIBRARIES . '/cms.php';

// Force library to be in JError legacy mode
JError::$legacy = true;

// Load the configuration
require_once JPATH_CONFIGURATION . '/configuration.php';
// Get the framework.
require_once JPATH_LIBRARIES . '/import.php';

// Bootstrap the CMS libraries.
require_once JPATH_LIBRARIES . '/cms.php';

// Force library to be in JError legacy mode
JError::$legacy = true;

// Import necessary classes not handled by the autoloaders
jimport('joomla.application.menu');
jimport('joomla.environment.uri');
jimport('joomla.event.dispatcher');
jimport('joomla.utilities.utility');
jimport('joomla.utilities.arrayhelper');

if (!defined('DTR_COM_COMPONENT')){

define('DTR_COM_COMPONENT',"com_dtregister");

define("DTR_COMPONENT",str_replace("com_","",'DT_COM_COMPONENT'));

}
define('JPATH_COMPONENT_ADMINISTRATOR',JPATH_ADMINISTRATOR."/components/com_dtregister") ;

//global $mainframe;
//$mainframe = JFactory::getApplication('site');
//$mainframe->initialise();
//include_once(JPATH_COMPONENT_ADMINISTRATOR.DS.'lib'.DS.'defines.php');
JLoader::register('DtrModel' , JPATH_SITE.DS.'administrator'.DS.'components'.DS.'com_dtregister'.DS.'lib'.DS.'dtmodel.php');

JLoader::register('DtrModeladmin' , JPATH_SITE.DS.'administrator'.DS.'components'.DS.'com_dtregister'.DS.'lib'.DS.'dtmodeladmin.php');
JLoader::register('DtrTable' , JPATH_SITE.DS.'administrator'.DS.'components'.DS.'com_dtregister'.DS.'lib'.DS.'dttable.php');
JLoader::register('DT_Tagparser' , JPATH_SITE.DS.'administrator'.DS.'components'.DS.'com_dtregister'.DS.'lib'.DS.'tagparser.php');
include_once(JPATH_SITE."/administrator/components/com_dtregister/models/user.php");
include_once(JPATH_SITE."/administrator/components/com_dtregister/models/config.php");
include_once(JPATH_SITE."/administrator/components/com_dtregister/models/reminder.php");
include_once(JPATH_SITE."/administrator/components/com_dtregister/models/paymentmethod.php");
include_once(JPATH_SITE."/administrator/components/com_dtregister/models/fieldtype.php");
$config = new DtregisterModelConfig(array());


$config->setGlobal();
jimport('joomla.application.component.helper');
DtrTable::addIncludePath(JPATH_ADMINISTRATOR.DS.'components'.DS.DTR_COM_COMPONENT.DS.'models');
class Updatecron // extends JApplicationCli
{
/**
* Entry point for the script
*
* @return void
*
* @since 2.5
*/
public function execute()
{
echo "In Execute()\n";

$this->_db = $db = JFactory::getDBO();

$reminder = & DtrTable::getInstance('Reminder','DtrTable');
$reminders = $reminder->find() ;
foreach($reminders as $reminder) {

$records = $this->get_records($reminder);
$reminderT = & DtrTable::getInstance('Reminder','DtrTable');
$reminderT->load($reminder->id);
$files = $reminderT->files;

foreach($records as $record) {
$this->send($record,$reminder->message,$reminder->subject,$reminderT->files);
}
}
}

function send($record,$message="",$subject= "",$files = array()) {
global $DT_mailfrom,$DT_fromname,$thanksmsg,$admin_registrationemail,$admin_notification,$subject_admin_registrationemail, $admin_email_from_user;
global $sendEmailToGroup ;
$event = & DtrTable::getInstance('event','Table');
$user = & DtrTable::getInstance('Duser','Table');
$user->load($record->userId);
$user->TableEvent->load($user->eventId);
$Tagparser = new DT_Tagparser();
$groupmsg = $Tagparser->getTagcontent('GROUP_MEMBER',$message);

$memberdata = "";

if($user->type == 'G'){
$memeber_msg = array();
foreach($user->members as $member){

$message = $Tagparser->parsetags($groupmsg,$member);
$memeber_msg[] = $message;
$memberdata .= $message;
$subject_mem = $Tagparser->parsetags($subject,$member);

}

if($sendEmailToGroup ==1){
$i = 0;
foreach($user->members as $member){
$Tagparser->parse_password = true;
$usermsg = $Tagparser->replaceTagContent('GROUP_MEMBER',$message,$memeber_msg[$i]);
$message = $Tagparser->parsetags($usermsg,$member);
$subject = $Tagparser->parsetags($subject,$member);
$attachments = array();
if(is_array($user->TableEvent->file) && $this->status != -2){
foreach($user->TableEvent->file as $attach){
$attachments[] = $attach->path;
}
}

if(isset($member->email) && $member->email != "" && $sendEmailToGroup ==1 ){
echo $member->email."\n";
JUTility::sendMail( $DT_mailfrom, strip_tags(html_entity_decode($DT_fromname)),$member->email,strip_tags(html_entity_decode($subject)),$message,1,null,null,$attachments);

}
$i++;
}
}
}

$Tagparser->parse_password = true;
$usermsg = $Tagparser->replaceTagContent('GROUP_MEMBER',$message,$memberdata);
$message = $Tagparser->parsetags($usermsg,$user);

$subject = $Tagparser->parsetags($subject,$user);

$email = $user->getFieldByName('email');

$attachments = array();
if(is_array($files) ){
foreach($files as $attach){
$attachments[] = $attach;
}
}

// $this->out($email);
// echo "Subject : ".$subject."\n ";
// echo "Message : ".$message."\n ";


JUTility::sendMail( $DT_mailfrom, strip_tags(html_entity_decode($DT_fromname)),$email,strip_tags(html_entity_decode($subject)),$message,1,null,null,$attachments);


}

function get_records($reminder = 0) {

if($reminder->timer == 0){
$timer = $reminder->timer + 1 ;
} else {
$timer = $reminder->timer ;
}
$condition = "" ;
if($reminder->eventId) {
$condition = " and e.slabId = '".$reminder->eventId."' ";
}
$query = "SELECT u.userId
FROM #__dtregister_user u
INNER JOIN #__dtregister_group_event e
ON e.slabId = u.eventId
WHERE DATEDIFF(e.dtstart,NOW()) = $timer and u.status in (0,1) ".$condition;
$this->_db->setQuery($query);
//echo $this->_db->getQuery()."\n";
$records = $this->_db->loadObjectList();
return $records ;
}
}

echo "Calling Execute\n";
$x = new Updatecron();
$x->execute();
//JApplicationCli::getInstance('Updatecron')->execute();
echo "Done with Execute\n";