How to combine multiple cURL requests in one? - php

Question

This is the code I am currently using
function curl_get_contents($url) {
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
$data = curl_exec($ch);
return $data;
}
function meta_scrap($filename, $other, $programming) {
$link = 'https://graph.facebook.com/?id=' . $filename . '&scrape=true&method=post';
$output = curl_get_contents($link);
$output = json_decode($output);
$ogtitle = $output->title;
}
I call meta_scrap($filename); 8 times on a single webpage. This makes the page load really slow. Is there something that I can do about it? I read about curl_multi_init() I tried to use it like this
function curl_get_contents($pages) {
$ch = curl_init();
$ch = array();
$mh = curl_multi_init();
for ($i = 0; $i < count($pages); $i++) {
$page = $pages[$i];
$ch[$i] = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $page);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, 1);
curl_multi_add_handle($mh, $ch[$i]);
}
$running = 0;
do {
curl_multi_exec($mh, $running);
} while ($running > 0);
$data = curl_exec($ch);
$results = reset(json_decode(curl_multi_getcontent($ch[$i]), true));
$resultCount = count($results);
curl_close($ch);
return $data;
}
With this I get no output? Could anyone help me modify my code so that it gives correct output?

Answer 1

You seem to have started working with multiple requests then cut and pasted a single curl request handler here:
$data = curl_exec($ch);
$results = reset(json_decode(curl_multi_getcontent($ch[$i]), true));
$resultCount = count($results);
....but I can't imagine where you would have found piece of code which uses reset() like this.
You try to put the response into $results, yet you then throw this array away and return something completely different.
Try this....
...
$running = count($pages);
do {
curl_multi_exec($mh, $running);
usleep(5000);
} while ($running > 0);
$responses=array();
for ($i = 0; $i < count($pages); $i++) {
$responses[$i]=json_decode(curl_multi_getcontent($ch[$i]), true);
}
return $responses;
If you will be reusing the function then you should also remove and close each curl handle then close the multi-handle before returning.
See also my recent blog post about curl_multi_exec().