Question

My application has a single index.php

Main things it does are

1. Uses facebook login to let the user login to my application. (In future I will use additional sites like google etc for login etc)

2. Does the “Main work”

3. Displays the result.

Main work:

1. Gets an access token from fb. – Takes <10 ms

2. Gets data set 1 – Uses accesstoken and gets data about the user. – Takes about a second.

3. Gets data set 2 – Spiders each of the friend in the list for partiuclar information – Takes about a second for each friend. So, takes around 300 seconds on average.

4. Does some processing – Few Seconds

Problem Areas
1. Step 3 exceeds Max_Execution_Time always.

Solution constraints
1. Wish to stick with php only. No Python/ruby.

My code skeleton is :

<?php

//  Login
$facebook->getloginurl ......

//Main work
$access_token = $facebook-> ...... 
$user_id = $facebok->get ......

// Following is the time consuming step
foreach $friend_of_that_user .... get information required for this app.

//Displays result
echo ""
?>

Answer 1

You are making a single request for each friend! this can be enhanced by one of the following methods:

1. Field Expansion:
   Getting the name and 5 movies of the first 100 friends:

   me?fields=friends.limit(100).fields(name,movies.limit(5).fields(name))
   

2. Batch API:
   For example, to get the details of 5 of your friends, you can issue the following Batch request:

   curl \
      -F 'access_token=...' \
      -F 'batch=[{ "method":"GET","name":"get-friends","relative_url":"me/friends?limit=5",},{"method":"GET","relative_url":"?ids={result=get-friends:$.data.*.id}"}]' \
      https://graph.facebook.com/
   

Now I would really recommend considering pagination instead of removing the limit field all together. If pagination is relevant to your app, it could enhance the experience A LOT!