too slow

[diodave]

Does anyone know why this might execute so slowly?

Here's the page http://www.dio.org/catholictimes/cnsmovie.php

Here's the code.

function cnsmovie(){

	$number = date('y').'mv';
	$suffix = '.htm';
	//varies from year to year. This number represents the first posted review of 2004. I assume they increase by 1 for each posted review.
	$movNum = 300;
	$theurl = 'http://www.catholicnews.com/data/movies/'.$number.$movNum.$suffix;

	$contents = ""; 

	//this moves through the list of posted reviews until it can't find one. 
	while($handle = fopen($theurl, 'r'))
	{
		$movNum += 1;
		$theurl = 'http://www.catholicnews.com/data/movies/'.$number.$movNum.$suffix;
	}

	//moves the pointer back to the last known good review url
	$movNum -= rand(1,4);

	$theurl = 'http://www.catholicnews.com/data/movies/'.$number.$movNum.$suffix;

	$handle = fopen($theurl, 'r');

	while(!feof($handle)){
		$data = fread($handle, 8192); 
		if (strlen($data) == 0) { 
			break; 
		} 
		$contents .= $data; 
	}

	$start = strpos($contents, "<b>Movie Review</b>");
	$end = strpos($contents, "END<br>");

	$stringEnd = substr($contents, $end);
	$stringEndLen = strlen($stringEnd);
	$stringEndLen = -($stringEndLen);

	$contents = substr($contents, $start, $stringEndLen);
	$contents = strip_tags($contents, "<p>, <b>, <br>");

	echo '<p class="department">'.$contents.'</p>';
	echo '<p class="emphasis"><a href="http://www.catholicnews.com/movies.htm" target="new">For more CNS Movie reviews, Click Here</a></p>';

	fclose($handle);

}

Any help would be appreciated.

[laserlight]

I/O tends to be expensive, so the problem might be an algorithmic one: looping and attempting to open files can be a slow process.

Incidentally, you might want to look into [man]file_get_contents/man, and use target="_blank" instead of target="new".

[diodave]

Thanks,

I just tried fread() in place of fopen() in the initial loop and it worked great. I hadn't considered that it was opening every one that it could.:rolleyes:

Oh well, thanks again.

I looked into the differences between new and _blank, and didn't see any real significant differences other than the window being named "new". Is this all or am I missing something?

[drawmack]

might even just try http://www.php.net/file_exists

[diodave]

One of the comments in the manual was that if it doesn't find the file, it takes a long time. it's worth a shot to see though, thanks.