using curl within foreach loop optimization? - php

Question

Is it bad practice or will it be slower if I use curl within a foreach loop?
I'm planning on having an autocomplete input field, and the query in the input would be sent to an API call.
I'm getting an id from a certain link (ie: http://api.linke1.com/names)
foreach($json as j){
$id = $j->id; //from http://api.linke1.com/names
$url = "https://api.site/{$id}/photos";
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, false);
$output = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
$jsonDecode = json_decode($output);
$results = $jsonDecode->results;
foreach($results as $result)
{
$photoURL= $result->photo->url; //from https://api.site/{$id}/photos
}
}
So every time I type in a name, it will go into the foreach searching for an id from http://api.linke1.com/names, and then it will look for the photo url from the other link. I wanted to output a list of an array, so eventually i'll have a list of data to output showing information such as name, photo, etc...
Will this slow down dramatically because each letter typed in the input field it will run through this foreach loop. Would there be an easier way?
Thanks!

Answer 1

Initialize the curl and the things that doesn't change before the loop and close it afterwards.
That will speed up the thing a little bit.
and you can use curl_multi_*, which can fetch several URLs in parallel.
http://se2.php.net/manual/en/ref.curl.php