I am currently running a queue system with beanstalk + supervisor + PHP.
I would like my workers to automatically die when a new version is available (basically code update).
My current code is as follow
class Job1Controller extends Controller
{
public $currentVersion = 5;
public function actionIndex()
{
while (true) {
// check if a new version of the worker is available
$file = '/config/params.php';
$paramsContent = file_get_contents($file);
$params = eval('?>' . file_get_contents($file));
if ($params['Job1Version'] != $this->currentVersion) {
echo "not the same version, exit worker \n";
sleep(2);
exit();
} else {
echo "same version, continue processing \n";
}
}
}
}
When I will update the code, the params file will change with a new version number which will force the worker to terminate. I cannot use include as the file will be loaded in memory in the while loop. Knowing that the file params.php isn't critical in terms of security I wanted to know if there was another way of doing so?
Edit: the params.php looks as follow:
<?php
return [
'Job1Version' => 5
];
$params = require($file);
Since your file has a return statement, the returned value will be passed along.
After few tests I finally managed to find a solution which doesn't require versionning anymore.
$reflectionClass = new \ReflectionClass($this);
$lastUpdatedTimeOnStart = filemtime($reflectionClass->getFileName());
while (true) {
clearstatcache();
$reflectionClass = new \ReflectionClass($this);
$lastUpdatedTime = filemtime($reflectionClass->getFileName());
if ($lastUpdatedTime != $lastUpdatedTimeOnStart) {
// An update has been made, exit
} else {
// worker hasn't been modified since running
}
}
Whenever the file will be updated, the worker will automatically exit
Thanks to #Rudie who pointed me into the right direction.
Related
I installed gearman extension and gearman command line tool also. I tried to reverse a string using gearman from simple php file.
Example:
$gmclient= new GearmanClient();
$gmclient->addServer();
$result = $gmclient->doNormal("reverse", "Test the reverse string");
echo "Success: $result\n";
output:
Success: gnirts esrever eht tseT
In the same way i tried to run exec('ls -l') , I am able to execute using simple php files from cakephp application from webroot directory. filepath: cakephp/app/webroot/worker.php, cakephp/app/webroot/client.php.
worker.php
<?php
$worker= new GearmanWorker();
$worker->addServer();
$worker->addFunction("exec", "executeScript");
while ($worker->work());
function executeScript($job)
{
$param = $job->workload();
$t = exec($param);
return $t;
}
?>
client.php
<?php
$client= new GearmanClient();
$client->addServer();
$cmd = 'ls -l';
print $client->do("exec", $cmd);
?>
How to implement the same type of execution using View, Controller from cakephp?
Workflow: Post data from View to Controller using ajax method and execute "exec() from gearman" , send output back to View as response of ajax POST methhod.
Why are you using exec?! That brings a huge security risk. Use DirectoryIterator instead.
Your client code should be part of the controller.
<?php
class UploadController extends AppController
{
public function directoryList()
{
$directory = '';
// Get data
if (!empty($this->data['directory']) && is_string($this->data['directory']))
{
$directory = $this->data['directory'];
}
$client= new GearmanClient();
$client->addServer("localhost",4730); // Important!!!
$result = $client->do("fileList", serialize($data));
return $result;
}
}
Then from view use requestAction.
$uploads = $this->requestAction(
array('controller' => 'upload', 'action' => 'directoryList'),
array('return')
);
Worker could look like this:
<?php
$worker= new GearmanWorker();
$worker->addServer("localhost",4730); // Important!!!
$worker->addFunction("fileList", "getFileList");
while ($worker->work());
// From Art of Web
// http://www.the-art-of-web.com/php/directory-list-spl/
function getFileList($dir)
{
// array to hold return value
$retval = array();
$dir = $job->workload();
// add trailing slash if missing
if(substr($dir, -1) != "/") $dir .= "/";
// open directory for reading
$d = new DirectoryIterator($dir) or die("getFileList: Failed opening directory $dir for reading");
foreach($d as $fileinfo) {
// skip hidden files
if($fileinfo->isDot()) continue;
$retval[] = array(
'name' => "{$dir}{$fileinfo}",
'type' => ($fileinfo->getType() == "dir") ?
"dir" : mime_content_type($fileinfo->getRealPath()),
'size' => $fileinfo->getSize(),
'lastmod' => $fileinfo->getMTime()
);
}
return $retval;
}
This is pseudo code. Do not use it in production!!! See Gearman documentation for more advance worker setup.
To actually take advantage of load distribution Gearman server should not be on localhost of course.
Your worker.php needs to be already running on a server for this to work. For testing, open up a new terminal window to the server where you want worker.php to run. Start the worker: php worker.php on the command line. (On a production server, you might want to look at supervisor to run your worker without a terminal.)
The code in client.php would go in your controller, but save the result to a variable instead of a print statement.
The fact that this would be from an AJAX call is irrelevant, it will work the same as a normal web page. When the controller executes, the gearman client code will get a response from the worker, and you can output the result to the view.
How should I multithread some php-cli code that needs a timeout?
I'm using PHP 5.6 on Centos 6.6 from the command line.
I'm not very familiar with multithreading terminology or code. I'll simplify the code here but it is 100% representative of what I want to do.
The non-threaded code currently looks something like this:
$datasets = MyLibrary::getAllRawDataFromDBasArrays();
foreach ($datasets as $dataset) {
MyLibrary::processRawDataAndStoreResultInDB($dataset);
}
exit; // just for clarity
I need to prefetch all my datasets, and each processRawDataAndStoreResultInDB() cannot fetch it's own dataset. Sometimes processRawDataAndStoreResultInDB() takes too long to process a dataset, so I want to limit the amount of time it has to process it.
So you can see that making it multithreaded would
Speed it up by allowing multiple processRawDataAndStoreResultInDB() to execute at the same time
Use set_time_limit() to limit the amount of time each one has to process each dataset
Notice that I don't need to come back to my main program. Since this is a simplification, you can trust that I don't want to collect all the processed datasets and do a single save into the DB after they are all done.
I'd like to do something like:
class MyWorkerThread extends SomeThreadType {
public function __construct($timeout, $dataset) {
$this->timeout = $timeout;
$this->dataset = $dataset;
}
public function run() {
set_time_limit($this->timeout);
MyLibrary::processRawDataAndStoreResultInDB($this->dataset);
}
}
$numberOfThreads = 4;
$pool = somePoolClass($numberOfThreads);
$pool->start();
$datasets = MyLibrary::getAllRawDataFromDBasArrays();
$timeoutForEachThread = 5; // seconds
foreach ($datasets as $dataset) {
$thread = new MyWorkerThread($timeoutForEachThread, $dataset);
$thread->addCallbackOnTerminated(function() {
if ($this->isTimeout()) {
MyLibrary::saveBadDatasetToDb($dataset);
}
}
$pool->addToQueue($thread);
}
$pool->waitUntilAllWorkersAreFinished();
exit; // for clarity
From my research online I've found the PHP extension pthreads which I can use with my thread-safe php CLI, or I could use the PCNTL extension or a wrapper library around it (say, Arara/Process)
https://github.com/krakjoe/pthreads (and the example directory)
https://github.com/Arara/Process (pcntl wrapper)
When I look at them and their examples though (especially the pthreads pool example) I get confused quickly by the terminology and which classes I should use to achieve the kind of multithreading I'm looking for.
I even wouldn't mind creating the pool class myself, if I had a isRunning(), isTerminated(), getTerminationStatus() and execute() function on a thread class, as it would be a simple queue.
Can someone with more experience please direct me to which library, classes and functions I should be using to map to my example above? Am I taking the wrong approach completely?
Thanks in advance.
Here comes an example using worker processes. I'm using the pcntl extension.
/**
* Spawns a worker process and returns it pid or -1
* if something goes wrong.
*
* #param callback function, closure or method to call
* #return integer
*/
function worker($callback) {
$pid = pcntl_fork();
if($pid === 0) {
// Child process
exit($callback());
} else {
// Main process or an error
return $pid;
}
}
$datasets = array(
array('test', '123'),
array('foo', 'bar')
);
$maxWorkers = 1;
$numWorkers = 0;
foreach($datasets as $dataset) {
$pid = worker(function () use ($dataset) {
// Do DB stuff here
var_dump($dataset);
return 0;
});
if($pid !== -1) {
$numWorkers++;
} else {
// Handle fork errors here
echo 'Failed to spawn worker';
}
// If $maxWorkers is reached we need to wait
// for at least one child to return
if($numWorkers === $maxWorkers) {
// $status is passed by reference
$pid = pcntl_wait($status);
echo "child process $pid returned $status\n";
$numWorkers--;
}
}
// (Non blocking) wait for the remaining childs
while(true) {
// $status is passed by reference
$pid = pcntl_wait($status, WNOHANG);
if(is_null($pid) || $pid === -1) {
break;
}
if($pid === 0) {
// Be patient ...
usleep(50000);
continue;
}
echo "child process $pid returned $status\n";
}
I have a function that needs to go over around 20K rows from an array, and apply an external script to each. This is a slow process, as PHP is waiting for the script to be executed before continuing with the next row.
In order to make this process faster I was thinking on running the function in different parts, at the same time. So, for example, rows 0 to 2000 as one function, 2001 to 4000 on another one, and so on. How can I do this in a neat way? I could make different cron jobs, one for each function with different params: myFunction(0, 2000), then another cron job with myFunction(2001, 4000), etc. but that doesn't seem too clean. What's a good way of doing this?
If you'd like to execute parallel tasks in PHP, I would consider using Gearman. Another approach would be to use pcntl_fork(), but I'd prefer actual workers when it's task based.
The only waiting time you suffer is between getting the data and processing the data. Processing the data is actually completely blocking anyway (you just simply have to wait for it). You will not likely gain any benefits past increasing the number of processes to the number of cores that you have. Basically I think this means the number of processes is small so scheduling the execution of 2-8 processes doesn't sound that hideous. If you are worried about not being able to process data while retrieving data, you could in theory get your data from the database in small blocks, and then distribute the processing load between a few processes, one for each core.
I think I align more with the forking child processes approach for actually running the processing threads. There is a brilliant demonstration in the comments on the pcntl_fork doc page showing an implementation of a job daemon class
http://php.net/manual/en/function.pcntl-fork.php
<?php
declare(ticks=1);
//A very basic job daemon that you can extend to your needs.
class JobDaemon{
public $maxProcesses = 25;
protected $jobsStarted = 0;
protected $currentJobs = array();
protected $signalQueue=array();
protected $parentPID;
public function __construct(){
echo "constructed \n";
$this->parentPID = getmypid();
pcntl_signal(SIGCHLD, array($this, "childSignalHandler"));
}
/**
* Run the Daemon
*/
public function run(){
echo "Running \n";
for($i=0; $i<10000; $i++){
$jobID = rand(0,10000000000000);
while(count($this->currentJobs) >= $this->maxProcesses){
echo "Maximum children allowed, waiting...\n";
sleep(1);
}
$launched = $this->launchJob($jobID);
}
//Wait for child processes to finish before exiting here
while(count($this->currentJobs)){
echo "Waiting for current jobs to finish... \n";
sleep(1);
}
}
/**
* Launch a job from the job queue
*/
protected function launchJob($jobID){
$pid = pcntl_fork();
if($pid == -1){
//Problem launching the job
error_log('Could not launch new job, exiting');
return false;
}
else if ($pid){
// Parent process
// Sometimes you can receive a signal to the childSignalHandler function before this code executes if
// the child script executes quickly enough!
//
$this->currentJobs[$pid] = $jobID;
// In the event that a signal for this pid was caught before we get here, it will be in our signalQueue array
// So let's go ahead and process it now as if we'd just received the signal
if(isset($this->signalQueue[$pid])){
echo "found $pid in the signal queue, processing it now \n";
$this->childSignalHandler(SIGCHLD, $pid, $this->signalQueue[$pid]);
unset($this->signalQueue[$pid]);
}
}
else{
//Forked child, do your deeds....
$exitStatus = 0; //Error code if you need to or whatever
echo "Doing something fun in pid ".getmypid()."\n";
exit($exitStatus);
}
return true;
}
public function childSignalHandler($signo, $pid=null, $status=null){
//If no pid is provided, that means we're getting the signal from the system. Let's figure out
//which child process ended
if(!$pid){
$pid = pcntl_waitpid(-1, $status, WNOHANG);
}
//Make sure we get all of the exited children
while($pid > 0){
if($pid && isset($this->currentJobs[$pid])){
$exitCode = pcntl_wexitstatus($status);
if($exitCode != 0){
echo "$pid exited with status ".$exitCode."\n";
}
unset($this->currentJobs[$pid]);
}
else if($pid){
//Oh no, our job has finished before this parent process could even note that it had been launched!
//Let's make note of it and handle it when the parent process is ready for it
echo "..... Adding $pid to the signal queue ..... \n";
$this->signalQueue[$pid] = $status;
}
$pid = pcntl_waitpid(-1, $status, WNOHANG);
}
return true;
}
}
you can use "PTHREADS"
very easy to install and works great on windows
download from here -> http://windows.php.net/downloads/pecl/releases/pthreads/2.0.4/
Extract the zip file and then
move the file 'php_pthreads.dll' to php\ext\ directory.
move the file 'pthreadVC2.dll' to php\ directory.
then add this line in your 'php.ini' file:
extension=php_pthreads.dll
save the file.
you just done :-)
now lets see example of how to use it:
class ChildThread extends Thread {
public $data;
public function run() {
/* Do some expensive work */
$this->data = 'result of expensive work';
}
}
$thread = new ChildThread();
if ($thread->start()) {
/*
* Do some expensive work, while already doing other
* work in the child thread.
*/
// wait until thread is finished
$thread->join();
// we can now even access $thread->data
}
for more information about PTHREADS read php docs here:
PHP DOCS PTHREADS
if you'r using WAMP like me, then you should add 'pthreadVC2.dll' into
\wamp\bin\apache\ApacheX.X.X\bin
and also edit the 'php.ini' file (same path) and add the same line as before
extension=php_pthreads.dll
GOOD LUCK!
What you are looking for is parallel which is a succinct concurrency API for PHP 7.2+
$runtime = new \parallel\Runtime();
$future = $runtime->run(function() {
for ($i = 0; $i < 500; $i++) {
echo "*";
}
return "easy";
});
for ($i = 0; $i < 500; $i++) {
echo ".";
}
printf("\nUsing \\parallel\\Runtime is %s\n", $future->value());
Output:
.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*..*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*
Using \parallel\Runtime is easy
Have a look at pcntl_fork. This allows you to spawn child processes which can then do the separate work that you need.
Not sure if a solution for your situation but you can redirect the output of system calls to a file, thus PHP will not wait until the program is finished. Although this may result in overloading your server.
http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.exec.php - If a program is started with this function, in order for it to continue running in the background, the output of the program must be redirected to a file or another output stream. Failing to do so will cause PHP to hang until the execution of the program ends.
There's Guzzle with its concurrent requests
use GuzzleHttp\Client;
use GuzzleHttp\Promise;
$client = new Client(['base_uri' => 'http://httpbin.org/']);
$promises = [
'image' => $client->getAsync('/image'),
'png' => $client->getAsync('/image/png'),
'jpeg' => $client->getAsync('/image/jpeg'),
'webp' => $client->getAsync('/image/webp')
];
$responses = Promise\Utils::unwrap($promises);
There's the overhead of promises; but more importantly Guzzle only works with HTTP requests and it works with version 7+ and frameworks like Laravel.
Is there a way you can abort a block of code if it's taking too long in PHP? Perhaps something like:
//Set the max time to 2 seconds
$time = new TimeOut(2);
$time->startTime();
sleep(3)
$time->endTime();
if ($time->timeExpired()){
echo 'This function took too long to execute and was aborted.';
}
It doesn't have to be exactly like above, but are there any native PHP functions or classes that do something like this?
Edit: Ben Lee's answer with pcnt_fork would be the perfect solution except that it's not available for Windows. Is there any other way to accomplish this with PHP that works for Windows and Linux, but doesn't require an external library?
Edit 2: XzKto's solution works in some cases, but not consistently and I can't seem to catch the exception, no matter what I try. The use case is detecting a timeout for a unit test. If the test times out, I want to terminate it and then move on to the next test.
You can do this by forking the process, and then using the parent process to monitor the child process. pcntl_fork is a method that forks the process, so you have two nearly identical programs in memory running in parallel. The only difference is that in one process, the parent, pcntl_fork returns a positive integer which corresponds to the process id of the child process. And in the other process, the child, pcntl_fork returns 0.
Here's an example:
$pid = pcntl_fork();
if ($pid == 0) {
// this is the child process
} else {
// this is the parent process, and we know the child process id is in $pid
}
That's the basic structure. Next step is to add a process expiration. Your stuff will run in the child process, and the parent process will be responsible only for monitoring and timing the child process. But in order for one process (the parent) to kill another (the child), there needs to be a signal. Signals are how processes communicate, and the signal that means "you should end immediately" is SIGKILL. You can send this signal using posix_kill. So the parent should just wait 2 seconds then kill the child, like so:
$pid = pcntl_fork();
if ($pid == 0) {
// this is the child process
// run your potentially time-consuming method
} else {
// this is the parent process, and we know the child process id is in $pid
sleep(2); // wait 2 seconds
posix_kill($pid, SIGKILL); // then kill the child
}
You can't really do that if you script pauses on one command (for example sleep()) besides forking, but there are a lot of work arounds for special cases: like asynchronous queries if you programm pauses on DB query, proc_open if you programm pauses at some external execution etc. Unfortunately they are all different so there is no general solution.
If you script waits for a long loop/many lines of code you can do a dirty trick like this:
declare(ticks=1);
class Timouter {
private static $start_time = false,
$timeout;
public static function start($timeout) {
self::$start_time = microtime(true);
self::$timeout = (float) $timeout;
register_tick_function(array('Timouter', 'tick'));
}
public static function end() {
unregister_tick_function(array('Timouter', 'tick'));
}
public static function tick() {
if ((microtime(true) - self::$start_time) > self::$timeout)
throw new Exception;
}
}
//Main code
try {
//Start timeout
Timouter::start(3);
//Some long code to execute that you want to set timeout for.
while (1);
} catch (Exception $e) {
Timouter::end();
echo "Timeouted!";
}
but I don't think it is very good. If you specify the exact case I think we can help you better.
This is an old question, and has probably been solved many times by now, but for people looking for an easy way to solve this problem, there is a library now: PHP Invoker.
You can use declare function if the execution time exceeds the limits. http://www.php.net/manual/en/control-structures.declare.php
Here a code example of how to use
define("MAX_EXECUTION_TIME", 2); # seconds
$timeline = time() + MAX_EXECUTION_TIME;
function check_timeout()
{
if( time() < $GLOBALS['timeline'] ) return;
# timeout reached:
print "Timeout!".PHP_EOL;
exit;
}
register_tick_function("check_timeout");
$data = "";
declare( ticks=1 ){
# here the process that might require long execution time
sleep(5); // Comment this line to see this data text
$data = "Long process result".PHP_EOL;
}
# Ok, process completed, output the result:
print $data;
With this code you will see the timeout message.
If you want to get the Long process result inside the declare block you can just remove the sleep(5) line or increase the Max Execution Time declared at the start of the script
What about set-time-limit if you are not in the safe mode.
Cooked this up in about two minutes, I forgot to call $time->startTime(); so I don't really know exactly how long it took ;)
class TimeOut{
public function __construct($time=0)
{
$this->limit = $time;
}
public function startTime()
{
$this->old = microtime(true);
}
public function checkTime()
{
$this->new = microtime(true);
}
public function timeExpired()
{
$this->checkTime();
return ($this->new - $this->old > $this->limit);
}
}
And the demo.
I don't really get what your endTime() call does, so I made checkTime() instead, which also serves no real purpose but to update the internal values. timeExpired() calls it automatically because it would sure stink if you forgot to call checkTime() and it was using the old times.
You can also use a 2nd script that has the pause code in it that is executed via a curl call with a timeout set. The other obvious solution is to fix the cause of the pause.
Here is my way to do that. Thanks to others answers:
<?php
class Timeouter
{
private static $start_time = FALSE, $timeout;
/**
* #param integer $seconds Time in seconds
* #param null $error_msg
*/
public static function limit($seconds, $error_msg = NULL)
: void
{
self::$start_time = microtime(TRUE);
self::$timeout = (float) $seconds;
register_tick_function([ self::class, 'tick' ], $error_msg);
}
public static function end()
: void
{
unregister_tick_function([ self::class, 'tick' ]);
}
public static function tick($error)
: void
{
if ((microtime(TRUE) - self::$start_time) > self::$timeout) {
throw new \RuntimeException($error ?? 'You code took too much time.');
}
}
public static function step()
: void
{
usleep(1);
}
}
Then you can try like this:
<?php
try {
//Start timeout
Timeouter::limit(2, 'You code is heavy. Sorry.');
//Some long code to execute that you want to set timeout for.
declare(ticks=1) {
foreach (range(1, 100000) as $x) {
Timeouter::step(); // Not always necessary
echo $x . "-";
}
}
Timeouter::end();
} catch (Exception $e) {
Timeouter::end();
echo $e->getMessage(); // 'You code is heavy. Sorry.'
}
I made a script in php using pcntl_fork and lockfile to control the execution of external calls doing the kill after the timeout.
#!/usr/bin/env php
<?php
if(count($argv)<4){
print "\n\n\n";
print "./fork.php PATH \"COMMAND\" TIMEOUT\n"; // TIMEOUT IN SECS
print "Example:\n";
print "./fork.php /root/ \"php run.php\" 20";
print "\n\n\n";
die;
}
$PATH = $argv[1];
$LOCKFILE = $argv[1].$argv[2].".lock";
$TIMEOUT = (int)$argv[3];
$RUN = $argv[2];
chdir($PATH);
$fp = fopen($LOCKFILE,"w");
if (!flock($fp, LOCK_EX | LOCK_NB)) {
print "Already Running\n";
exit();
}
$tasks = [
"kill",
"run",
];
function killChilds($pid,$signal) {
exec("ps -ef| awk '\$3 == '$pid' { print \$2 }'", $output, $ret);
if($ret) return 'you need ps, grep, and awk';
while(list(,$t) = each($output)) {
if ( $t != $pid && $t != posix_getpid()) {
posix_kill($t, $signal);
}
}
}
$pidmaster = getmypid();
print "Add PID: ".(string)$pidmaster." MASTER\n";
foreach ($tasks as $task) {
$pid = pcntl_fork();
$pidslave = posix_getpid();
if($pidslave != $pidmaster){
print "Add PID: ".(string)$pidslave." ".strtoupper($task)."\n";
}
if ($pid == -1) {
exit("Error forking...\n");
}
else if ($pid == 0) {
execute_task($task);
exit();
}
}
while(pcntl_waitpid(0, $status) != -1);
echo "Do stuff after all parallel execution is complete.\n";
unlink($LOCKFILE);
function execute_task($task_id) {
global $pidmaster;
global $TIMEOUT;
global $RUN;
if($task_id=='kill'){
print("SET TIMEOUT = ". (string)$TIMEOUT."\n");
sleep($TIMEOUT);
print("FINISHED BY TIMEOUT: ". (string)$TIMEOUT."\n");
killChilds($pidmaster,SIGTERM);
die;
}elseif($task_id=='run'){
###############################################
### START EXECUTION CODE OR EXTERNAL SCRIPT ###
###############################################
system($RUN);
################################
### END ###
################################
killChilds($pidmaster,SIGTERM);
die;
}
}
Test Script run.php
<?php
$i=0;
while($i<25){
print "test... $i\n";
$i++;
sleep(1);
}
I'm trying to create a PHP file, which wouldn't run if it's already running. Here's the code I'm using:
<?php
class Test {
private $tmpfile;
public function action_run() {
$this->die_if_running();
$this->run();
}
private function die_if_running() {
$this->tmpfile = #fopen('.refresher2.pid', "w");
$locked = #flock($this->tmpfile, LOCK_EX|LOCK_NB);
if (! $locked) {
#fclose($this->tmpfile);
die("Running 2");
}
}
private function run() {
echo "NOT RUNNNING";
sleep(100);
}
}
$test = new Test();
$test->action_run();
The problem is, when I run this from console, it works great. But when I try to run it from browser, many instances can run simultaneously. This is on Windows 7, XAMPP, PHP 5.3.2. I guess OS is thinking that it's the same process and thus the functionality falls. Is there a cross-platform way to create a PHP script of this type?
Not really anything to promising. You can't use flock for that like this.
You could use system() to start another (php) process that does the locking for you. But drawbacks:
You need to do interprocess communication. Think about a way how to tell the other program when to release the lock etc. You can use stdin for messenging und use 3 constants or something. In this case it's still rather simple
It's bad for performance because you keep creating processes which is expensive.
Another way would be to start another program that runs all the time. You connect to it using some means of IPC (probably just use a tcp channel because it's cross-platform) and allow this program to manage file acces. That program could be a php script in an endless loop as well, but it will probably be simpler to code this in Java or another language that has multithreading support.
Another way would be to leverage existing ressources. Create a dummy database table for locks, create an entry for the file and then do table-row-locking.
Another way would be not to use files, but a database.
I had a similar problem a while ago.
I needed to have a counter where the number returned was unique.
I used a lock-file and only if this instance was able to create the lock-file was it allowed to read the file with the current number.
Instead of counting up perhaps you can allow the script to run.
The trick is to let try a few times (like 5) with a small wait/sleep in between.
function GetNextNumber()
{
$lockFile = "lockFile.txt";
$lfh = #fopen($lockFile, "x");
if (!$lfh)
{
$lockOkay = false;
$count = 0;
$countMax = 5;
// Try ones every second in 5 seconds
while (!$lockOkay & $count < $countMax)
{
$lfh = #fopen($lockFile, "x");
if ($lfh)
{
$lockOkay = true;
}
else
{
$count++;
sleep(1);
}
}
}
if ($lfh)
{
$fh = fopen($myFile, 'r+') or die("Too many users. ");
flock($fh, LOCK_EX);
$O_nextNumber = fread($fh, 15);
$O_nextNumber = $O_nextNumber + 1;
rewind($fh);
fwrite($fh, $O_knr);
flock($fh, LOCK_UN);
fclose($fh);
unlink($lockFile); // Sletter lockfilen
}
return $O_nextNumber;
}