How to make asynchronous HTTP requests in PHP

Question

Is there a way in PHP to make asynchronous HTTP calls? I don't care about the response, I just want to do something like file_get_contents(), but not wait for the request to finish before executing the rest of my code. This would be super useful for setting off "events" of a sort in my application, or triggering long processes.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

class async_file_get_contents extends Thread{
    public $ret;
    public $url;
    public $finished;
        public function __construct($url) {
        $this->finished=false;
        $this->url=$url;
    }
        public function run() {
        $this->ret=file_get_contents($this->url);
        $this->finished=true;
    }
}
$afgc=new async_file_get_contents("http://example.org/file.ext");

Answer 2

1. Fake a request abortion using CURL setting a low CURLOPT_TIMEOUT_MS

2. set ignore_user_abort(true) to keep processing after the connection closed.

With this method no need to implement connection handling via headers and buffer too dependent on OS, Browser and PHP version

Master process

function async_curl($background_process=''){

    //-------------get curl contents----------------

    $ch = curl_init($background_process);
    curl_setopt_array($ch, array(
        CURLOPT_HEADER => 0,
        CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER =>true,
        CURLOPT_NOSIGNAL => 1, //to timeout immediately if the value is < 1000 ms
        CURLOPT_TIMEOUT_MS => 50, //The maximum number of mseconds to allow cURL functions to execute
        CURLOPT_VERBOSE => 1,
        CURLOPT_HEADER => 1
    ));
    $out = curl_exec($ch);

    //-------------parse curl contents----------------

    //$header_size = curl_getinfo($ch, CURLINFO_HEADER_SIZE);
    //$header = substr($out, 0, $header_size);
    //$body = substr($out, $header_size);

    curl_close($ch);

    return true;
}

async_curl('http://example.com/background_process_1.php');

Background process

ignore_user_abort(true);

//do something...

NB

If you want cURL to timeout in less than one second, you can use CURLOPT_TIMEOUT_MS, although there is a bug/"feature" on "Unix-like systems" that causes libcurl to timeout immediately if the value is < 1000 ms with the error "cURL Error (28): Timeout was reached". The explanation for this behavior is:

[...]

The solution is to disable signals using CURLOPT_NOSIGNAL

Resources

• curl timeout less than 1000ms always fails?

• http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.curl-setopt.php#104597

• http://php.net/manual/en/features.connection-handling.php

Answer 3

let me show you my way :)

needs nodejs installed on the server

(my server sends 1000 https get request takes only 2 seconds)

url.php :

<?
$urls = array_fill(0, 100, 'http://google.com/blank.html');

function execinbackground($cmd) { 
    if (substr(php_uname(), 0, 7) == "Windows"){ 
        pclose(popen("start /B ". $cmd, "r"));  
    } 
    else { 
        exec($cmd . " > /dev/null &");   
    } 
} 
fwite(fopen("urls.txt","w"),implode("\n",$urls);
execinbackground("nodejs urlscript.js urls.txt");
// { do your work while get requests being executed.. }
?>

urlscript.js >

var https = require('https');
var url = require('url');
var http = require('http');
var fs = require('fs');
var dosya = process.argv[2];
var logdosya = 'log.txt';
var count=0;
http.globalAgent.maxSockets = 300;
https.globalAgent.maxSockets = 300;

setTimeout(timeout,100000); // maximum execution time (in ms)

function trim(string) {
    return string.replace(/^\s*|\s*$/g, '')
}

fs.readFile(process.argv[2], 'utf8', function (err, data) {
    if (err) {
        throw err;
    }
    parcala(data);
});

function parcala(data) {
    var data = data.split("\n");
    count=''+data.length+'-'+data[1];
    data.forEach(function (d) {
        req(trim(d));
    });
    /*
    fs.unlink(dosya, function d() {
        console.log('<%s> file deleted', dosya);
    });
    */
}


function req(link) {
    var linkinfo = url.parse(link);
    if (linkinfo.protocol == 'https:') {
        var options = {
        host: linkinfo.host,
        port: 443,
        path: linkinfo.path,
        method: 'GET'
    };
https.get(options, function(res) {res.on('data', function(d) {});}).on('error', function(e) {console.error(e);});
    } else {
    var options = {
        host: linkinfo.host,
        port: 80,
        path: linkinfo.path,
        method: 'GET'
    };        
http.get(options, function(res) {res.on('data', function(d) {});}).on('error', function(e) {console.error(e);});
    }
}


process.on('exit', onExit);

function onExit() {
    log();
}

function timeout()
{
console.log("i am too far gone");process.exit();
}

function log() 
{
    var fd = fs.openSync(logdosya, 'a+');
    fs.writeSync(fd, dosya + '-'+count+'\n');
    fs.closeSync(fd);
}

Answer 4

You can use non-blocking sockets and one of pecl extensions for PHP:

• http://php.net/event
• http://php.net/libevent
• http://php.net/ev
• https://github.com/m4rw3r/php-libev

You can use library which gives you an abstraction layer between your code and a pecl extension: https://github.com/reactphp/event-loop

You can also use async http-client, based on the previous library: https://github.com/reactphp/http-client

See others libraries of ReactPHP: http://reactphp.org

Be careful with an asynchronous model. I recommend to see this video on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWNcItWuKpI

Answer 5

The swoole extension. https://github.com/matyhtf/swoole Asynchronous & concurrent networking framework for PHP.

$client = new swoole_client(SWOOLE_SOCK_TCP, SWOOLE_SOCK_ASYNC);

$client->on("connect", function($cli) {
    $cli->send("hello world\n");
});

$client->on("receive", function($cli, $data){
    echo "Receive: $data\n";
});

$client->on("error", function($cli){
    echo "connect fail\n";
});

$client->on("close", function($cli){
    echo "close\n";
});

$client->connect('127.0.0.1', 9501, 0.5);

Answer 6

You can use this library: https://github.com/stil/curl-easy

It's pretty straightforward then:

<?php
$request = new cURL\Request('http://yahoo.com/');
$request->getOptions()->set(CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);

// Specify function to be called when your request is complete
$request->addListener('complete', function (cURL\Event $event) {
    $response = $event->response;
    $httpCode = $response->getInfo(CURLINFO_HTTP_CODE);
    $html = $response->getContent();
    echo "\nDone.\n";
});

// Loop below will run as long as request is processed
$timeStart = microtime(true);
while ($request->socketPerform()) {
    printf("Running time: %dms    \r", (microtime(true) - $timeStart)*1000);
    // Here you can do anything else, while your request is in progress
}

Below you can see console output of above example. It will display simple live clock indicating how much time request is running:

---