Asynchronous/parallel post

[richie]

I need to send the same data to 10 remote servers.

I don't need the script to wait for a response from each server.

Here is an example using curl:

function post_data_by_curl($url, $data_array) {
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, "$url");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, http_build_query($data_array));
curl_exec($ch);
}

$url = array(url1, url2, url3, url4, url5, url6, ...);

foreach ($url as $value) {
post_data_by_curl($value, $data_array);
}

In the foreach loop, I want each step to run in the background, so that slow servers don't hold up the script.

I don't care about a response from each remote server. I just want the process to start, run in the background, and then let php move on to the next server.

[bradgrafelman]

Instead of looping through the list of cURL objects one-by-one, look at using [man]curl_multi_init/man (and ultimately [man]curl_multi_exec/man) to execute them all in parallel.

[richie]

Thanks a lot.

I'll give that a try.

[richie]

curl_multi_exec() is better than looping through each url, especially when a large number of requests are involved.

However, the speed of the php script is still subject to the slowest among the remote servers. In other words, the slowest remote server has to respond/timeout, before the script can end.

I'm still looking for a way to put the requests in the background, so the php script doesn't have to wait around for a response.

I may ultimately have to resort to using php-cli via shell command, something like:

exec("/bin/php another_script.php data1=X data2=Y &")

My goal though is to make the application I'm building as generic as possible, since some servers enable safe mode or disable exec().