php- how to do async. processing to add tasks in queue? - php

Question

I have an SMS API that enables to send text messages. I want to use it to send SMSs in bulk.
User can enter upto 30,000 numbers at once and send SMSs. What I am using might be a really bad approach:
foreach ($targets as $target) {
sendSms($target,$text,$extra_parms):
}
It takes 10 minutes to process for 10,000 requests (SMSs) and it's too much. What I want is when a user should click 'Send' button, he should get a message like:
"Your SMS(s) have been added to queue to be sent"
And all the SMSs should be sent in background. How can I do that?
Thanks for the help.

Answer 1

Follow below Process:
Instead of directly calling API, Insert all the data into your
database.
Once numbers and text added in your DB, Show user message
"Your SMS(s) have been added to queue to be sent"
User Background process which will take data from DB and call asynchronous API requests using http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.curl-multi-exec.php
Update/Delete processed API records in database so next time you can fetch only data which are not processed.
Please note: Normal CURL request use synchronous and it wait for for response which make delay.

Answer 2

Create queue i.e. in database and put all your SMS actions there. Create separate script that will be sending SMSes (in batches, as whole whatever) and have it periodically started (i.e. using Curl) to deal with your queue.

Answer 3

That's what I use:
function fast_post($url,$data){
ignore_user_abort(true);
$ch = curl_init();
$defaults = array(
CURLOPT_POST => 1,
CURLOPT_HEADER => 0,
CURLOPT_URL => $url,
CURLOPT_FRESH_CONNECT => 1,
CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => 1,
CURLOPT_FORBID_REUSE => 1,
CURLOPT_TIMEOUT => 1,
CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS => http_build_query($data)
);
curl_setopt_array($ch, $defaults);
curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
}
Note that in this function $data is an array.