PHP cURL requests being slow - php

Question

im trying to grab the contents from a URL(which is a json) that changes for each iteration of my loop. The problem with my method of doing things is that it is very slow and if I do about 120 iterations it takes over 40sec.
Here is my code:
$GetFriendListUrl = "http://api.steampowered.com/ISteamUser/GetFriendList/v0001/?key=mykey&steamid=".$other_steamid."&relationship=friend";
$GET_GetFriendListUrl= file_get_contents($GetFriendListUrl);
$raw_ids = json_decode($GET_GetFriendListUrl , TRUE);
$count = count($raw_ids['friendslist']['friends']);
$ci = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ci, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
for ($x = 0; $x <= $count; $x++) {
$friendslist = $raw_ids['friendslist']['friends'][$x]['steamid'];
curl_setopt($ci, CURLOPT_URL, "https://api.steampowered.com/ISteamUser/GetPlayerSummaries/v0002/?key=mykey&steamids=".$friendslist);
$cont = curl_exec($ci);
$contFull = json_decode($cont, true);
$steamname = $contFull['response']['players'][0]['personaname'];
$steamprofileurl = $contFull['response']['players'][0]['profileurl'];
$friendimage = $contFull['response']['players'][0]['avatar'];
$friendimageData = base64_encode(file_get_contents($friendimage));
echo '<img class="other_friendsteamimage" src="data:image/jpeg;base64,'.$friendimageData.'">';
echo "<a class='other_friendlabel' href='$steamprofileurl'>$steamname</a>";
echo "<br>";
}
curl_close($ci);

Answer 1

I cannot be sure of the format of the data returned by the api and I have no means of testing the following but in line with the comment I made and based upon the documentation it would appear that sending few requests but with each request dealing with 100 steamIDs you should save considerable amount of time.
/* get the intial data */
$url = "http://api.steampowered.com/ISteamUser/GetFriendList/v0001/?key=mykey&steamid=".$other_steamid."&relationship=friend";
$data= file_get_contents( $url );
$json = json_decode( $data );
$ids=array();
/* just grab the IDs and add to array - correct format to access records??? */
foreach( $json->friendslist->friends as $obj ){
$ids[]=$obj->steamid;
}
/* split the IDs into chunks of 100 */
$chunks=array_chunk( $ids, 100 );
/* send a request per chunk of 100 */
foreach( $chunks as $chunk ){
$url=sprintf('https://api.steampowered.com/ISteamUser/GetPlayerSummaries/v0002/?key=mykey&steamids=%s',implode(',',$chunk));
$curl = curl_init( $url );
curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
$res=curl_exec( $curl );
if( $res ){
$data=json_decode($res,true);
/* do stuff .... */
}
curl_close($curl);
}
echo 'Finito';