Question

I have to call a php function wich takes one second to response, in a “for” loop :

    for ($i=0; $i<count($wsdlTab); $i++)
    {
        $serverLoadTab[$i] = $this->getServerLoad($wsdlTab[$i]);
    }

My problem is that I would like to call my getServerLoad($wsdlTab[$i]) function simultaneous for each row of my $wsdlTab[$i], to not have to wait one second on each loop.

That is the reason why I need to call that function in a thread.

I have seen various ways to “emulate” threads, but I have not found any way with my limitations :

• I have to get the return value of my getServerLoad($wsdlTab[$i]), and put in in an array
• The Apache server is on Windows

Thanks in advance for your responses.

Answer 1

PHP doesn’t really have asynchronous or threading built-in, as you’ve discovered.

What I might do in a case like this is separate the script I need to execute in a parallel, putting it into its own, small and self-contained PHP file. Then I’d execute that in a separate thread, storing the result somewhere I could monitor in the original thread. Once all the scripts have returned and filled the results, or with some given timeout, I would then continue with processing.

So, for instance,

prepareResults(); // something like clearing a db row or zeroing out a file or whatever
for ($i=0; $i<count($wsdlTab); $i++) {
    exec('./doServerLoad.php ' . $wsdlTab[$i] . ' &');
}
while (!waitingForResults()) { // checking the results table/row/file
}
$serverLoadTab = parseTheResults();