timeout on a function

[sfullman]

so one of my functions calls an outside script (on another server) -- the server may be down.

How do I write a fucntion so I can tell it "hey, you've got 10 seconds to get this, ifyou don't just return false so I can get on with things" ???

Surprised I've never thought of this question before, the call that is hanging is $string=file('http://othersite.com');

Thanks,
Sam

[ScubaKing22]

Try using set_time_limit(). Hope this helps 😃

[sfullman]

dont' think that's it, you have to be able to set the execution time for a SINGLE SECTION OF CODE, then recover without a fatal error. I'm thinking perhaps you could overcome error reporting, temporarily lower time limit to say 5 seconds, and then handle the error and proceed, but that's complex (I haven't even attempted error handling yet).

Is this possible or out of your skillset (too :-)?

Sam