premature end to script?

corsa

Hi,
I'm running a reciprocal link checker that checks whether other sites in my link directory still link to my site.
Basically what the script is doing is it opens each website in the link directory (using the file function) and checks whether my url is still on the page (using the ereg function).
All of this happens in a while loop.
As there are over 900 sites to check I have a feeling that the script times out before it checks all the sites.
I have included some text that is echoed during the while loop the informs me of any sites that don't link back to me.
Once the while loop is finished an "all done" message should be echoed.

When calling the script it takes about 30 seconds, then a handful of sites that don't link back to my site are echoed, but the "all done" message never appears.

Is it fair to assume that the script times out and PHP simply echoes the text up until the time out?
Should there be an error message if the script times out?

Is there any way to make sure the script completes the while loop?

Thank you for your help.

Corsa

void_function

It is fair to assume that the script timed out before end. See if this helps:

http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.set-time-limit.php

See additional links there on how to change exec time via php.ini, if your host allows it.

ragedigital

I would break the number of sites it checks per while loop into a smaller number.

corsa

Thank you for your reply guys.
Apart from increasing the time limit or splitting the amount of links to check is there anything else that can be done?
In general, what's the best way to reliably work with functions that take a long time to execute?

I have set set_time_limit inside the while loop and it seems to be working, ie. it reaches the "all done" echo outside of the while loop.

What I don't understand is that it runs the script, the browser window is empty, then it dumps the first 15 or so "site XYZ doesn't have the link" messages for the sites that don't have the reciprocal link any more, then the script keeps going and adds another few messages to the browser output, etc.
I thought that all of the script output (i.e. the echo messages) would happen AFTER the script has been executed, not WHILE it is being executed?

Corsa

madwormer2

You can force output to the browser using flush();

Don't know if that helps or not.

corsa

Thank you for your reply.
I'm not worried when it outputs, I'm just wondering whether it is normal that php echoes during the execution of a while loop, instead of finishing the while loop first... I guess it just depends on the output buffer settings.