PHP cURL 'Fatal error: Allowed memory size' for large data sets

Question

I know about the option to set the internal memory

ini_set("memory_limit","30M");

But I wanted to know if there is a better approach for querying data?

I have a WHILE LOOP that checks to see if I need to query for another 1000 records. using the offset as the starting record number and the limit as the returned records, I search for all records matching my data request. I hit about 100K in records before I get the error.

Now during testing I found that I get the 'Fatal error: Allowed memory size...' error. I've read by setting the above ini_set() to allow for the increase in memory but I wanted to know if I could just code it better?

Each time I execute the code below in the WHILE LOOP, the memory usage grows very large. Even if I unset($curl). I think it could be reduced if I could unset the $result and $curl variables after I have parsed out the results before the next cURL query.

function getRequest($url,$user,$pwd) {

    $curl = curl_init();

    curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_VERBOSE, 1);
    curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT, 2);
    curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);
    curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_HTTPAUTH, CURLAUTH_BASIC);
    curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
    curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_USERPWD, "$user:$pwd");
    curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_HTTP_VERSION, CURL_HTTP_VERSION_1_1);
    curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_ENCODING, '');
    curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_URL, $url);

    $result = curl_exec($curl);

    $httpResponseCode = (int)curl_getinfo($curl, CURLINFO_HTTP_CODE);

    switch ($httpResponseCode) {
        case 500:
            // Send problem email
            break;
        case 200:
            // GET was good
            break;
        default:
            // Send problem email
            break;
    }    
    curl_close($curl);
    return $result;
} 

WHILE LOOP (Slim version)

while($queryFlag) { // $queryFlag is TRUE

        // Check if we have more records to query, if not set $queryFlag to FALSE

        // Build cURL URL

        echo "Before Call Memory Usage: ".memory_get_usage()."\n";
        $resultXML  = getRequest($query,$user,$pass);
        echo "After Call Memory Usage: ".memory_get_usage()."\n";

        $results        = new ParseXMLConfig((string)$resultXML); // This is basically a class for $this->xml = simplexml_load_string($xml);

        // Loop through results and keep what  I'm looking for
        foreach($results as $resultsKey => $resultsData) {
            if(preg_match('|^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$|i', $resultsData)) {
                $resultsArr["$resultsData"] = $resultsData;
            }
        }

    }

Some memory numbers

• Before Call Memory Usage: 1819736
• After Call Memory Usage: 2285344
• keep data I need
• dump data I don't need
• Next LOOP Iteration
• Before Call Memory Usage: 2084128
• After Call Memory Usage: 2574952

Answer 1

I guess you are using incorrect key for $resultsArr. You are using same string as both key and value.

Try changing

$resultsArr["$resultsData"] = $resultsData

to

$resultsArr[$resultsKey] = $resultsData

Answer 2

Settled for:

ini_set("memory_limit","30M");