Flat File: Script timeout.

[TalonFinsky]

Hi Folks,

I'm have a bit of a problem when trying to generate a formatted flat file from database values.

What this script is doing is generating a flat file containing client billing information to be passed to my credit card processing program. At any given point, it may be doing this for up to 200 clients.

The way the script works is as follows:

A previous script generates a table containing the full list of clients that are to be billed on that particular day, each with their own checkbox (named "sel[CLIENT ID]"). When a user is checked and the form submitted, it runs this script.

Now, when I run this with a single client selected, it works beautifully. The client information gets passed correctly, formatted correctly, and written to the file correctly. However, when I run this with more than one client selected, it times out and I get ye olde "max_execution_time" error, even with just 2. I increased the "max_execution_time" from 30 to 60 seconds to no avail.

It doesn't seem to be the actual working with the file that is causing the problem - I commented that code out and still got the same result, so I'm assuming it has to do with the formatting of the billing variables. The credit card processor needs a very specific format (fixed-width), with certain portions of the file having a specified width, padded with spaces or a char (ie - "0"s).

As you can see, right now it is using while() loops to accomplish many of the formatting needs. This works, but I feel as if doing it another way could help the problem. What do you think?

Here's the code:

			echo "Generating bill!<br><br>";

		$cquery = "select * from [i]yadda yadda[/i]";
		$cresult = mysql_query($cquery, $dbconnect);
		$cnum = mysql_num_rows($cresult);

		$recnum = 1;

		$file = "/path/to/billingfile.txt";
		$fp = fopen($file, "w");

		for ($i=0; $i<$cnum; $i++) {
			$cinfo = mysql_fetch_array($cresult);
			$custbox = "sel".$cinfo["customer_id"];

			if ($_REQUEST[$custbox] == "on") {
				$bquery = "select * from billing where customer_id = \"".$cinfo["customer_id"]."\"";
				$bresult = mysql_query($bquery, $dbconnect);
				$binfo = mysql_fetch_array($bresult);

				$dquery = "select domain_name from domain where customer_id = \"".$cinfo["customer_id"]."\"";
				$dresult = mysql_query($dquery, $dbconnect);
				$dinfo = mysql_fetch_array($dresult);

				/****************************
				 Generate and fwrite billing
				 line for client.
				****************************/
				while (strlen($recnum) != 4) {
					$recnum = "0".$recnum;
				}
				$recnum .= "N S";		

				$ccnum = $binfo["cc_num"];
				$ccsplit = explode("~", $ccnum);
				$ccnum = $ccsplit[0];
				while (strlen($ccnum) != 21) {
					$ccnum .= " ";
				}

				$ccexp = $ccsplit[1];

				$amount = $binfo["amount"];
				$amtsplit = explode(".", $amount);
				$amount = $amtsplit[0].$amtsplit[1];
				while (strlen($amount) != 12) {
					$amount = "0".$amount;
				}


				if (preg_match("/(.{6}).*/", $dinfo["domain_name"], $match)) {
					$client = "      $match[1]";
				}

				$ccavs = $binfo["ccavs"];
				$avssplit = explode("~", $ccavs);
				$avs1 = $avssplit[0];
				while (strlen($avs1) != 20) {
					$avs1 .= " ";
				}


				$avs2 = " ".$avssplit[1];
				while (strlen($avs2) != 10) {
					$avs2 .= " ";
				}

				$spacepad1 = "  ";
				$spacepad2 = "";
				while(strlen($spacepad2) != 56) {
					$spacepad2 .= " ";
				}

				$spacepad3 = "";
				while(strlen($spacepad3) != 151) {
					$spacepad3 .= " ";
				}
				$billingline = $recnum.$ccnum.$spacepad1.$ccexp.$amount.$spacepad2.$client.$spacepad3
."00000000000000@".$avs1.$avs2."\n";
					echo "$billingline<br>";
					fwrite($fp, $billingline);

			}

		}
		fclose($fp);
		echo "<br> END";

[dalecosp]

Timeouts are generally caused by "ye olde" endless loops. Add some checking for this script; there's nothing that I see that will warn you or halt anything if some datum has an unexpected value. Take a look at "Debugging 101" (linked in my .sig) for some examples.

First thing that looks a tad strange to me: you're calling mysql_fetch_array in a for loop. That's not verboten, of course, but I can't find where you'd be changing the value of $csel within that loop....heck, though, I'm probably just not getting it....

[TalonFinsky]

Originally posted by dalecosp
Timeouts are generally caused by "ye olde" endless loops. Add some checking for this script; there's nothing that I see that will warn you or halt anything if some datum has an unexpected value. Take a look at "Debugging 101" (linked in my .sig) for some examples.

First thing that looks a tad strange to me: you're calling mysql_fetch_array in a for loop. That's not verboten, of course, but I can't find where you'd be changing the value of $csel within that loop....heck, though, I'm probably just not getting it....

Well, the mysql_fetch_array in the for loop gathers the next row's information from $cresult (the entire list of clients) - mainly to check to see if the posted checkbox named selclientid is checked for each client.

If that's checked, it then goes to the formatting process, where it pads the sections that need it, formats them, and finally posts them to a file.

It works great if I select one client for this to work on, so I don't think this is an endless loop situation. Looking over the script, I can't find any either.

At this point, I think I'm trying something that's just beyond PHP's processing power. If I can't find an alternative by the end of the work day today, I'll just leave the front-end of it in PHP and write this portion in PERL 🙁 .

[dalecosp]

Heh, it does look a lil' like PERL.

I can't really spend time to debug the whole thing for you. Figure out where the stall is, and it'll probably shed enough light ....

<?php

echo "starting script \n";

// start script

echo "grabbing initial db info... \n";

// start the db stuff...

echo "entering for() loop \n";

// start the for loop

?>