Executing php function every x amount of time for multiple users - php

got this code:
<?php
function test ($url){
$starttime = microtime(true);
$valid = #fsockopen($url, 80, $errno, $errstr, 30);
$stoptime = microtime(true);
echo (round(($stoptime-$starttime)*1000)).' ms.';
if (!$valid) {
echo "Status - Failure";
} else {
echo "Status - Success";
}
}
test('google.com');
?>
I want to have an option to execute this function every 5mins / 1hour / 1 day etc.. I was suggested using cron, but i never heard of cron before and after doing some research i understood that its a sepperate file, that would exeute the function every x amout of time. What if i would have multiple users, for example userA would want to run the script every 5mins, and userB would want to run the script every hour. In this sittuation i would need to create multiple cron files for each user?
Edit:
I was thinking about doing something like this:
for ($i = 0; $i < 100; $i++) {
test('google.com');
sleep(10 * 60);
}
Only in the sleep line i would have a custom $n field that each user would define by themselves. My problem with this was - it returns results only when the full cycle has finished, i would want it to return result after every "round?" (idk what its called, but basically would give 1 value, then 10mins later 2nd value and so on) .

The only way I found is to use an ajax method which will be called from the user page within a setTimeout.
See : settimeout function

May be you need use cron (UNIX) or Windows Tasks (Microsoft) depending the OS on your server.
Cron
Windows Task
Greetings,

Related

Frequency of crontab calling a php function - Looking for alternative options

I'm programming my own "smart home" as a learning project.
My code is running fine. I'm looking for help to improve the efficiency and of the code and/or the setup of crontab + php code.
I'm monitoring the energy consumption of my washing machine with a WIFI energy meter. Target is to notify me once the washing machine is completed so I don't forget to clear it.
on my Pi I have a crontab like so:
*/20 7-22 * * * /usr/bin/php '/home/holger/html/plugs/washer.php'
which runs following php code (I simplified for better readability):
[...]/I call the function, of course, but this function does the main task
function loop($maschine, $watt_init, $trashhold){
$max = 75;//max loops to avoid endless runs
$i = 1;//start counter
$tackt = 3;//tact time to check energy consumption
//$trashhold = 4;//ab x Watt kein standby
if ($watt_init < 1 ) {//Machine is switched off if energy consumption < 1 Watt
die;//quit
}
elseif ($watt_init < 2 ) {//Machine is switched off or in standby if energy consumption < 1 Watt
die;//quit
}
else {//Any thing else: Machine is running
while ($i < $max) {//loop as long as max loops are not reached
$watt_current = json_combine(IPplug5);//getting current energy consumption from WIFI energy meter via JSON
sleep(60*$tackt);//sleep and continue every 60s x tact time
$i++;//increase counter +1
//compare actual consumption with defined trashhold
if ($watt_current[0] >= $trashhold) {//continue while energy consumption bigger then trashhold
continue;//repeat loop
}
elseif ($watt_current[0] < $trashhold) {//stop if energy consumption lower then trashhold
break;//stop loop
}
}
echo "Program done. please clear. Runtime: " . $i*$tackt. "Min."
//[...] message me to my telegram bot
}
}
The code is running fine and I'm getting the output I need.
My question is: Is there a better way to do that?
Currently I'm afraid to overload my Pi with too many open php sessions, therefore I'm starting the code only every 20min and also let the while loop sleep for 3 Min. But for improved accuracy I like to run the cronjob more often and also let the while loop sleep only for 30s.
My requirements are to stick to my PI and php code and not to use any available software like Home Assisant.io as it contradicts with my learning approach.
Any ideas or insights welcome.
Ideally it's a not the best approach to handling and measuring power consumption. It would be best if you created an API that accepts events like on/off or threshold hold limit extends from your IP devices.  Further you can create logs and store them in databases.
Although, for your current problem here is one alternate solution.
Set your cron that runs every second.
function get_powerConsumption($machine, $watt_init, $threshold)
{
if ($watt_init < 2) {
exit();
}
$time = date("Y-m-d H:i");
$filename = $machine . '_power_consumption.log'; // expecting some machine identification name here. otherwise ignore prefix
$watt_current = json_combine(IPplug5);
if ($watt_current[0] >= $threshold) {
$data = array(
$time,
$watt_current[0]
);
file_put_contents($filename, json_encode($data) . "\n", FILE_APPEND);
} elseif ($watt_current[0] < $threshold) {
$data = array(
$time,
'stopped'
);
file_put_contents($filename, json_encode($data) . "\n", FILE_APPEND);
}
}
Create another cron to look up for stopped events logged in the file. if found process the calculation based on logged data like time and consumption. You can set this cron to run based on your need like every second or minute or after some interval.
Also, handle code to delete old logs, once stopped events found.

Does PHP sleep() function allow to free the main thread for a specified amount of seconds?

I have a web application that allows the users to upload DBF files and the app will store contents into an SQL database. The row count range from a few thousands to about 80,000 rows and I have the following code
if($file){
$totalRows = dbase_numrecords($file);
for($i = 1; $i <= $totalRows; $i++){
$row = dbase_get_record_with_names($file, $i);
//echo $row["BILL_NO"]." ";
if(!empty(trim($row["STATUS"]))){ //save to database if column is not empty
$data = [
//array data from the row
];
$db->table("item_menu")->replace($data);
}
if($i%1000 == 0) //Sleep call here every 1000 rows
sleep(1);
}
echo "done";
}
This function, once done will be called once per day and ideally just called/run in the background. However, when I do not place the sleep function, the server doesn't serve any pages until the loop completes, which can take from a few seconds to about a minute of unresponsiveness, but when the sleep function is added, the server continuously serve pages to different users.
My question is, does the sleep function help free up the current thread and process other requests during the sleep period?
If you use sleep() function then you will end up executing all the thing in a single thread causing a pause on the whole process. You should go for php v8.1 for that kind of process handling.

php continue execution after leaving the page

I have a simple script that counts from 1 to 5000 with a for loop. It flushes output in real time to browser and shows a progress bar with %.
What I have: If I leave the page, the process interrupts. If I come back, it starts from 0.
What I want to achieve: If I leave the page, the process continues and, If I come back , it shows the right percentage.
Example: I run the process, it counts till 54, I leave the page for 10 seconds, when I come back it shows me 140 and continues to flush.
Is it possible?
I would suggest you to use server workers - scripts which are intended to run independently from webserver context.
The most common way of doing it - usage of message queues (RabbitMQ, Qless, etc). Event should be initiated by the script in web context, but the actual task should be executed by queue listener in a different context.
What you have asked seems quite simple to do with a session. (Purely assuming on the use case given). This is not running any process in the background, it just simply keep track of the time and show the progress. That's why I said "based on what you asked". If you want to keep track of any real background tasks, then I believe the case would be totally different, and you will have to change the wordings of your question as well ;)
Something like this would do.
<?php
session_start();
$s = &$_SESSION;
$sleep = 1; //seconds
//check if we have a value set in session before, if not set default = 0.
if(!isset($s['last'])){
$s['last'] = 0;
}
//check if we have a last time set in session before. if not set a default = curret time.
if(!isset($s['time'])){
$s['time'] = time();
}
//get the idle time of the user.
$idle = time() - $s['time'];
//start the loop..and set starting point.
$start = $s['last'] + ($idle / $sleep);
for( $i = $start; $i < 100; $i++){
echo $i . '<br />';
$s['last']++;
$s['time'] = time();
flush();
sleep($sleep);
}
Hope it helps!!

Too slow Http Client in Zend Framework 1.12

I want to send ~50 requests to different pages on the same domain and then, I'm using DOM object to gain urls to articles.
The problem is that this number of requests takes over 30 sec.
for ($i = 1; $i < 51; $i++)
{
$url = 'http://example.com/page/'.$i.'/';
$client = new Zend_Http_Client($url);
$response = $client->request();
$dom = new Zend_Dom_Query($response); // without this two lines, execution is also too long
$results = $dom->query('li'); //
}
Is there any way to speed this up?
It's a generel problem by design - not the code itself. If you're doing a for-loop over 50 items each opening an request to an remote uri, things get pretty slow since every requests waits until responde from the remote uri. e.g.: a request takes ~0,6 sec to been completed, multiple this by 50 and you get an exection time of 30 seconds!
Other problem is that most webserver limits its (open) connections per client to an specific amount. So even if you're able to do 50 requests simultaneously (which you're currently not), things won't speed up measurably.
In my option there is only one solution (without any deep going changes):
Change the amout of requests per exection. Make chunks from e.g. only 5 - 10 per (script)-call and trigger them by an external call (e.g. run them by cron).
Todo:
Build a wrapper function which is able to save the state of its current run ("i did request 1 - 10 at my last run, so now I have to call 11 - 20) into a file or database and trigger this function by an cron.
Example Code (untested) for better declaration;
[...]
private static $_chunks = 10; //amout of calls per run
public function cronAction() {
$lastrun = //here get last run parameter saved from local file or database
$this->crawl($lastrun);
}
private function crawl($lastrun) {
$limit = $this->_chunks + $lastrun;
for ($i = $lastrun; $i < limit; $i++)
{
[...] //do stuff here
}
//here set $lastrun parameter to new value inside local file / database
}
[...]
I can't think of a way to speed it up but you can increase the timeout limit in PHP if that is your concern:
for($i=1; $i<51; $i++) {
set_time_limit(30); //This restarts the timer to 30 seconds starting now
//Do long things here
}

Run an indefinite PHP script for an hour. Restart every hour

I wrote a PHP script to pull tweets from the Twitter firehose and store them into a database. Ideally I want to just let it run so that it collects tweets over time, thus, it's wrapped in a while(1) loop.
This seems to be problematic because it's timing out. If I just run it in a browser, it won't run for more than 30 seconds before timing out and giving me a 324 Error.
Question: Is there a way that I can have it run for a certain amount of time (20 seconds), auto kill itself, then restart? All in a cron job (PS...I don't know how to write a cron job)?
Background: Site hosted on Godaddy. Would ideally like to run this on my hosting server there.
The Script:
<?php
$start = time();
$expAddress = "HOSTNAME";
$expUser = "USERNAME";
$expPwd = "PASSWORD";
$database = "DBNAME";
$opts = array(
'http' => array(
'method' => "POST",
'content' => 'keywords,go,here',
)
);
// Open connection to stream
$db = mysql_connect($expAddress, $expUser, $expPwd);
mysql_select_db($database, $db);
$context = stream_context_create($opts);
while (1) {
$instream = fopen('https://USERNAME:PASSWORD#stream.twitter.com/1/statuses/filter.json','r' ,false, $context);
while(! feof($instream)) {
if(time() - $start > 5) { // break after 5 seconds
break;
}
if(! ($line = stream_get_line($instream, 100000, "\n"))) {
continue;
}
else {
$tweet = json_decode($line);
// Clean before storing
// LOTS OF VARIABLES FOR BELOW...REMOVED FOR READABILITY
// Send to database
$ok = mysql_query("INSERT INTO tweets
(created_at, from_user, from_user_id, latitude, longitude, tweet_id, language_code,
place_name, profile_img_url, source, text, retweet_count, followers_count,
friends_count, listed_count, favorites_count)
VALUES
(NOW(), '$from_user', '$from_user_id', '$latitude', '$longitude', '$tweet_id', '$language_code',
'$place_name', '$profile_img_url', '$source', '$text', '$retweet_count', '$followers_count',
'$friends_count', '$listed_count', '$favorites_count')");
if (!$ok) { echo "Mysql Error: ".mysql_error(); }
flush();
}
}
}
?>
You can have cron jobs run once a minute.
To do this follow these steps:
Make a script that runs your PHP code, for example:
#!/bin/bash
wget myurl.com/blah > /dev/null
Save it as my-cron.sh in some folder (like /var)
Add it to cron. Run crontab -e See Cron Format and Crontab usage.
This for example, will run it once a minute.
# Minute Hour Day of Month Month Day of Week Command
* * * * * /var/my-cron.sh
If I get well your need, the best thing for you is to use cron job making a script run indefinitely will not be a good idea.
As specifier in one of you comments you are using a hosting server Godaddy so probably you will not be able to have shell access, BUT depending on your cPanel version you may be able to create and define cron job.
see this link and this google search
Perhaps, if you don't have this option and you are wiling to let a browser opened I would suggest the following
create an html page as a client which would make an ajax request every hours to your PHP script, like this you emulate a cron job function
the ajax request code might look like (using jQuery)
function makeRequest(){
$.ajax({
url: "http://yourhost/url-to-your-script.php",
complete: function(data){
setTimeout(function(){
makeRequest();
}, 60 * 60 * 1000); // Minutes * Seconds * MS
}
});
}
makeRequest();
I hope this helps
EDIT
this link might help too
IMPORTANT DO NOT FORGET TO REMOVE THE INFINITE LOOP
I just had same issue.
Only cron job can do if you want run script off browser. You can set up cron job with free providers or you can set up cron job in windows's Scheduled tasks.
If your site has a good traffic then you can follow the option below that your users does the work for you.
In php you can find time in hour and seconds
$time= date(' H:i:s');
create a table to track if the code was run.
eg; table column name check with option 0 and 1;
select check from table.
enter code here
if ($minute > 59)
{
if($check==0)
{
run your code
then update the table each time when it was run
eg; update table set check='1'
}
}
then another if condition to reset your code
if(minute>0 && minute <1)
{
select check from your table.
if(check==1)
{
update table set check='0'
}
}

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