Multithreading in PHP

Question

I recently read about http://php.net/pcntl and was woundering how good that functions works and if it would be smart to use multithreading in PHP since it isn\'t a core func

Answer 1

If I needed to do manual crontab executions or the like from PHP, I'd probably use a queue. Have a database table that you append jobs to. Another process, either from a cron or running as a daemon, executes the jobs as they show up.

Another way to do it is to set up a separate script and do an HTTP GET to it. It's not quite threading, but it's one way of shelling to another command in PHP.

For example, if I wanted to run /usr/bin/somescript.sh on demand, I'd have a somescript.php that did a system call. This would be on a virtual host only accessible from localhost.

I'd do a socket call to the webserver and GET the script. The key is to not read on the socket so it doesn't block. If I wanted to check the return value of somescript.php, I'd do it later in my main script to prevent blocking.

If somescript.php takes a long time to execute (longer than the calling script), you'll have to do some magic to stop apache from killing the script when the socket is closed.