README.repetition

# explanation of repetition feature

PHPlist can now automatically re-schedule your messages after sending it. It will
create an exact copy of your message, which is generally not what you want, so it's
probably not that useful yet.

It will become useful once we have added the functionality to the system to allow
for dynamic content of messages (ie automated retrieval of some webpage)

For now (version 2.7.x), it's only use will be to work in conjunction with file system
attachments.
If you want PHPlist to send you some file from the server at a regular interval, 
the filesystem attachment will be refreshed at the moment of sending the (first) message.

*Exclusion of times and dates*

Even if you set PHPlist to send every certain interval, you can still tell it to
NOT send (ie re-schedule) the message at certain moments. You do this as follows:

You add the following to your config file (between ---)
---
# exclude dates for repetition
$repeat_exclude = array(
  array("format" => "%a", "values" => array("Sun","Sat")),
  array("format" => "%d-%m-%Y","values" => array("31-01-2004","01-01-2005")),
);
## end
---

Now that needs a bit of explanation. You can add as many entries as you like and 
the format is as follows:

one entry is formatted
array("format" => [format], "values" => array([list of values])),

where the bits between [ and ] can be chosen as you like it, but they have to fit
the following:

[format] needs to be a Mysql data format string which you can find at 
http://www.mysql.com/doc/en/Date_and_time_functions.html under "Date Format"

[list of values] needs to be a list of values that this format can return, 
which then, if matched with the new "embargo" for a message will not create a 
message for that date, but instead increases the "repetition value" to find the 
next one in a row.

So for example for excluding the weekend you use
  array("format" => "%a", "values" => array("Sun","Sat")),

and for excluding specific dates you can use
  array("format" => "%d-%m-%Y","values" => array("31-01-2004","28-08-2004")),