Question

Does anyone know what the best (or a really good) way is to load external files (about 10-20) from an api with performance in mind. Each session has different content. Currently I try “file_get_contents” but experience serious performance issues. I’m not really familiar with Curl but it seems performance wise to beat the good old PHP way. Any ideas/examples?

Answer 1

You could also use curl multi to grab multiple files at once, there is a tutorial here:

http://www.phpied.com/simultaneuos-http-requests-in-php-with-curl/

<?php
//Copy & pasted from the above link
function multiRequest($data, $options = array()) {
  // array of curl handles
  $curly = array();
  // data to be returned
  $result = array();
  // multi handle
  $mh = curl_multi_init();
  // loop through $data and create curl handles
  // then add them to the multi-handle
  foreach ($data as $id => $d) {
    $curly[$id] = curl_init();
    $url = (is_array($d) && !empty($d['url'])) ? $d['url'] : $d;
    curl_setopt($curly[$id], CURLOPT_URL,            $url);
    curl_setopt($curly[$id], CURLOPT_HEADER,         0);
    curl_setopt($curly[$id], CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
    // post?
    if (is_array($d)) {
      if (!empty($d['post'])) {
        curl_setopt($curly[$id], CURLOPT_POST,       1);
        curl_setopt($curly[$id], CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $d['post']);
      }
    }
    // extra options?
    if (!empty($options)) {
      curl_setopt_array($curly[$id], $options);
    }
    curl_multi_add_handle($mh, $curly[$id]);
  }
  // execute the handles
  $running = null;
  do {
    curl_multi_exec($mh, $running);
  } while($running > 0);
  // get content and remove handles
  foreach($curly as $id => $c) {
    $result[$id] = curl_multi_getcontent($c);
    curl_multi_remove_handle($mh, $c);
  }
  // all done
  curl_multi_close($mh);
  return $result;
}
?>

<?php
$data = array(
  'http://search.yahooapis.com/VideoSearchService/V1/videoSearch?appid=YahooDemo&query=Pearl+Jam&output=json',
  'http://search.yahooapis.com/ImageSearchService/V1/imageSearch?appid=YahooDemo&query=Pearl+Jam&output=json',
  'http://search.yahooapis.com/AudioSearchService/V1/artistSearch?appid=YahooDemo&artist=Pearl+Jam&output=json'
);
$r = multiRequest($data);

echo '<pre>';
print_r($r);
/*
Array
(
    [0] => {"ResultSet":{"totalResultsAvailable":"633","totalResultsReturned":...
    [1] => {"ResultSet":{"totalResultsAvailable":"105342","totalResultsReturned":...
    [2] => {"ResultSet":{"totalResultsAvailable":10,"totalResultsReturned":...
)
*/
?>

Or curl php docs http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.curl-multi-init.php