How can one use multi threading in PHP applications

Solution 1:

Multi-threading is possible in php

Yes you can do multi-threading in PHP with pthreads

From the PHP documentation:

pthreads is an object-orientated API that provides all of the tools needed for multi-threading in PHP. PHP applications can create, read, write, execute and synchronize with Threads, Workers and Threaded objects.

Warning: The pthreads extension cannot be used in a web server environment. Threading in PHP should therefore remain to CLI-based applications only.

Simple Test

#!/usr/bin/php
<?php
class AsyncOperation extends Thread {

    public function __construct($arg) {
        $this->arg = $arg;
    }

    public function run() {
        if ($this->arg) {
            $sleep = mt_rand(1, 10);
            printf('%s: %s  -start -sleeps %d' . "\n", date("g:i:sa"), $this->arg, $sleep);
            sleep($sleep);
            printf('%s: %s  -finish' . "\n", date("g:i:sa"), $this->arg);
        }
    }
}

// Create a array
$stack = array();

//Initiate Multiple Thread
foreach ( range("A", "D") as $i ) {
    $stack[] = new AsyncOperation($i);
}

// Start The Threads
foreach ( $stack as $t ) {
    $t->start();
}

?>

First Run

12:00:06pm:     A  -start -sleeps 5
12:00:06pm:     B  -start -sleeps 3
12:00:06pm:     C  -start -sleeps 10
12:00:06pm:     D  -start -sleeps 2
12:00:08pm:     D  -finish
12:00:09pm:     B  -finish
12:00:11pm:     A  -finish
12:00:16pm:     C  -finish

Second Run

12:01:36pm:     A  -start -sleeps 6
12:01:36pm:     B  -start -sleeps 1
12:01:36pm:     C  -start -sleeps 2
12:01:36pm:     D  -start -sleeps 1
12:01:37pm:     B  -finish
12:01:37pm:     D  -finish
12:01:38pm:     C  -finish
12:01:42pm:     A  -finish

Real World Example

error_reporting(E_ALL);
class AsyncWebRequest extends Thread {
    public $url;
    public $data;

    public function __construct($url) {
        $this->url = $url;
    }

    public function run() {
        if (($url = $this->url)) {
            /*
             * If a large amount of data is being requested, you might want to
             * fsockopen and read using usleep in between reads
             */
            $this->data = file_get_contents($url);
        } else
            printf("Thread #%lu was not provided a URL\n", $this->getThreadId());
    }
}

$t = microtime(true);
$g = new AsyncWebRequest(sprintf("http://www.google.com/?q=%s", rand() * 10));
/* starting synchronization */
if ($g->start()) {
    printf("Request took %f seconds to start ", microtime(true) - $t);
    while ( $g->isRunning() ) {
        echo ".";
        usleep(100);
    }
    if ($g->join()) {
        printf(" and %f seconds to finish receiving %d bytes\n", microtime(true) - $t, strlen($g->data));
    } else
        printf(" and %f seconds to finish, request failed\n", microtime(true) - $t);
}

Solution 2:

why don't you use popen?

for ($i=0; $i<10; $i++) {
    // open ten processes
    for ($j=0; $j<10; $j++) {
        $pipe[$j] = popen('script2.php', 'w');
    }

    // wait for them to finish
    for ($j=0; $j<10; ++$j) {
        pclose($pipe[$j]);
    }
}

Solution 3:

Threading isn't available in stock PHP, but concurrent programming is possible by using HTTP requests as asynchronous calls.

With the curl's timeout setting set to 1 and using the same session_id for the processes you want to be associated with each other, you can communicate with session variables as in my example below. With this method you can even close your browser and the concurrent process still exists on the server.

Don't forget to verify the correct session ID like this:

http://localhost/test/verifysession.php?sessionid=[the correct id]

startprocess.php

$request = "http://localhost/test/process1.php?sessionid=".$_REQUEST["PHPSESSID"];
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $request);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, 1);
curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
echo $_REQUEST["PHPSESSID"];

process1.php

set_time_limit(0);

if ($_REQUEST["sessionid"])
   session_id($_REQUEST["sessionid"]);

function checkclose()
{
   global $_SESSION;
   if ($_SESSION["closesession"])
   {
       unset($_SESSION["closesession"]);
       die();
   }
}

while(!$close)
{
   session_start();
   $_SESSION["test"] = rand();
   checkclose();
   session_write_close();
   sleep(5);
}

verifysession.php

if ($_REQUEST["sessionid"])
    session_id($_REQUEST["sessionid"]);

session_start();
var_dump($_SESSION);

closeprocess.php

if ($_REQUEST["sessionid"])
    session_id($_REQUEST["sessionid"]);

session_start();
$_SESSION["closesession"] = true;
var_dump($_SESSION);

Solution 4:

While you can't thread, you do have some degree of process control in php. The two function sets that are useful here are:

Process control functions http://www.php.net/manual/en/ref.pcntl.php

POSIX functions http://www.php.net/manual/en/ref.posix.php

You could fork your process with pcntl_fork - returning the PID of the child. Then you can use posix_kill to despose of that PID.

That said, if you kill a parent process a signal should be sent to the child process telling it to die. If php itself isn't recognising this you could register a function to manage it and do a clean exit using pcntl_signal.