Multitasking in PHP

Reaver

Wondering if anyone could help with a small problem I have ...

In among a page of code I've got a small block which is quite time consuming to process. This is causing the containing module to take an unacceptable time to complete.

I was thinking if there was anyway of starting this 'slow code' going and then continuing with the rest of the code so that the user does not notice any slowdown?

I'd had an idea of creating a separate script and then using a 1x1 image on the page with the source as that script, this should create the effect I'm after but it's not really good programming.

Has anyone got any better ideas?

daarius

how about using cron which triggers dynamically generated PHP code by your script, and then you can carry on with the rest of the script which outputs the data to the user?

Reaver

Yeah, I'd thought of that but the other code could do with being started with the rest of it, just can't afford to wait around for it to complete. (Should have said that at the start.)

Atom

I went to PHP.net and found some interesting stuff on multitasking. It may help you and it may not but here is the link to the documentation anyway:

http://www.php.net/manual/en/printwn/control-structures.declare.php

Hope that helps buddy.

Atom

Well I finished reading the user comments and it looks like you can't run 2 functions in parallel....I guess that link won't help you then Reaver, sorry 🙁

Atom

Reaver

This will make functions a and b run once each at the same time.

Looks like it might ... I'll have a play anyway, thanks all for your help with this. 🙂