Question

Anyone able to offer some ideas on this? Basically the module I’m building has a form (as per function_email_solicitors_compose), and on submission we obviously route to form_emails_solicitors_compose_submit. Here I define a batch in $batch, and batch_set the aforementioned batch. The drupal documentation says I don’t need to run batch_process() if it’s called from within a form_submit, which this is, but I’ve tried with and without. All tests have shown that it gets as far as defining the batch but never goes any further than that. email_solicitors_batch_iteration never runs. Any ideas?

As an additional bit of info, batch_get then returns the following:

Array
(
    [sets] => Array
        (
            [0] => Array
                (
                    [sandbox] => Array
                        (
                        )

                    [results] => Array
                        (
                        )

                    [success] => 
                    [title] => Emailing.
                    [operations] => Array
                        (
                            [0] => Array
                                (
                                    [0] =>

email_solicitors_batch_iteration
[1] => Array
(
[0] =>
[1] =>
)

                                )

                        )

                    [finished] => my_finished_callback
                    [init_message] => Initializing.<br/>&nbsp;
                    [progress_message] => Remaining

@remaining of @total.
[error_message] => An error has
occurred.
[total] => 1
)

        )

)

The code:

function email_solicitors_compose(){
    $form['email_solicitors_subject'] = array(
        '#type' => 'textfield',
        '#title' => t('Subject'),
        '#description' => t('Enter the subject of your email'),
        '#default_value' => 'Subject',
        '#size' => 30
    );
    $form['email_solicitors_message'] = array(
        '#type' => 'textarea',
        '#title' => t('Message'),
        '#description' => t('Write your message here. <strong>Please note that we will automatically add "Dear #name", which will be personalised to the solicitor.</strong>'),
        '#default_value' => '',
    );
    $form['email_solicitors_submit'] = array(
        '#type' => 'submit',
        '#title' => t('Submit'),
        '#description' => t('Sumbit this form.'),
        '#default_value' => 'Submit',
    );
    return $form;
}//function email_solicitors_compose


function email_solicitors_compose_submit($form_state)
{
    $batch = array(
        'title' => t('Sending emails to solicitors'),
        'operations' => array(
            array('email_solicitors_batch_iteration', array())
        ), 
        'finished' => 'email_solicitors_batch_finished', //run this when we're finished
        'init_message' => t('Preparing to send emails'), //initialisation message
        'progress_message' => t('Sent @current out of @total messages.'),
        'error_message' => t('Sorry, something went wrong when sending emails.'),
    );// create batch array
    $info=print_r($batch,TRUE);
    drupal_set_message($info);
    batch_set($batch);
    batch_process();
}//function email_solicitors_compose_submit


function email_solicitors_batch_iteration(&$context)
{
    // Initialize sandbox the first time through.
    if (!isset($context['sandbox']['progress'])) {
        $context['sandbox']['progress'] = 0;
        $context['sandbox']['current_user_id'] = 0;
        $context['sandbox']['max'] = db_result(db_query('SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT field_solicitor_email_value) FROM content_type_solicitor'));
    }
    $comment="On item ".$context['sandbox']['progress'];
    drupal_set_message ($comment);
}//function email_solicitors_batch_iteration

function email_solicitors_batch_finished (&$context)
{
    die ('woohoo we finished');
}

Answer 1

As an addition to the answer Clive has given, you could consider adding the “file” parameter to the batch-array. This will tell the API where the function is located.

Example:

   $batch = array(
        'title' => t('Sending emails to solicitors'),
        'operations' => array(
            array('email_solicitors_batch_iteration', array())
        ), 
        'finished' => 'email_solicitors_batch_finished', //run this when we're finished
        'init_message' => t('Preparing to send emails'), //initialisation message
        'progress_message' => t('Sent @current out of @total messages.'),
        'error_message' => t('Sorry, something went wrong when sending emails.'),
        'file' => drupal_get_path('module', '<module_name>').'/path_to_include_file.inc',
    );

It worked for me 🙂