timeout include script in php

Question

Hi,

I'm including a local class that requests a file from a remote server. This process however, is rather unreliable (in the sense that the remote server is often overloaded), and I would have to wait a few seconds (about 20 or so) before the include gives up and continues. Now, I would like to have a time limit on the execution time of the included script, say 5 seconds.

Current code:

include('siteclass.class.php');

Thx for the help!

//update thx ppl:

My code inside the class: `$movie = str_replace(" ","+",$movie); $string = join('',file($siteurl.$l.'/moviename-'.$movie));

if(!$i) { static $i = 1;} if($file_array = $string) {

$result = Return_Substrings($file_array, '<item>', '</item>');

  foreach($result as $res) {`

That's basically it, as far as the loading goes. The internal processing takes about 0.1 s. I guess that's pretty doable.

thx again!

Answer 1

This isn't an exact fit to what you're looking for, but this will set the time limit for the include and execution to a total of 25 seconds. If the time limit is reached, it throws a fatal error.

set_time_limit(25);

Answer 2

It sounds like set_time_limit() might do what you want:

PHP Manual for that function

Answer 3

Fix the included code to have a timeout on the HTTP Request and then recover nicely, instead of just aborting by setting a time limit on the script itself.

My advice would be to get to the root of the problem instead of looking for a workaround.

Answer 4

Note that I didn't test this code, take this like a proposition :

$fp = fopen('siteclass.class.php', 'r');

stream_set_timeout($fp, 2);
stream_set_timeout($fp,$timeout);
$info = stream_get_meta_data($fp);

if ($info['timed_out']) {
  echo "Connection Timed Out!";
} else {
  $file = '';
  while (!feof($fp)) {
    $file .= fgets($fp);
  }
  eval($file);
}

The timeout is set in seconds, so the example set it to two seconds.