php cURL request to instsagram API creates page lag - php

Question

I am using cURL toaccess instagrams API on a webpage I am building. THe functionality works great, however, page load is sacrificed. For instance, consider this DOM structure:
Header
Article
Instagram Photos (retrieved via cURL)
Footer
When loading the page, the footer will not load until the instagram hotos have been fully loaded with cURL. Below is the cURL function that is being called:
function fetchData($url){
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, 20);
$result = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
return $result;
}
$result = fetchData("https://api.instagram.com/v1/media/search?lat={$lat}&lng={$lng}&distance={$distance}&access_token={$accessToken}");
$result = json_decode($result);
So after this function is run, then the rest of the DOM is displayed. If I move the function call below the footer, it does not work.
Is there anything I can do to load the entire webpage and have the cURL request setn on top of the loading site (not cause a lag or holdup)?
UPDATE: Is the best solution to load it after the footer, and then append it to another area with js?

Answer 1

You can cache the result json into a file that is saved locally. You can make a cronjob that is called ever minute and update the locally cache file. This makes your page loading much more faster. The downside is that your cache is updating even when you don't have visitors and you have a delay of a minute in data from instagram.