Something like thread in php - php

Question

I'm trying to program yahoo messenger robot,now my robot can get messages and answer to them.
Yahoo only can send 100 pm at each time I get notification.
now I wanna answer the each pm. I use while(true){ } to it and answer first pm,then second ,then 3rd and ... .
It's so slow ,because I can make only one connection to yahoo by this(I use curlib).
how can I send some messages at same time?I think I need something like thread but in php.

Answer 1

you can use pcntl_fork(). http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.pcntl-fork.php
You need pcntl extension and it only works on Unix
If you use curl function you might take a look at curl_multi_init(). http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.curl-multi-init.php

Answer 2

I've wrote a simple function below, which launches URL, and doesn't wait for a result, so like this you can launch many URLs on your own site, it will make your loop fast, and also no need to install any extensions to your server.
function call_url_async($url, $params, $type='POST', $timeout_in_seconds = 1)
{
//call the URL and don't wait for the result - useful to do time-consuming tasks in background
foreach ($params as $key => &$val)
{
if (is_array($val))
$val = implode(',', $val);
$post_params[] = $key.'='.urlencode($val);
}
$post_string = implode('&', $post_params);
$parts=parse_url($url);
$fp = fsockopen($parts['host'], isset($parts['port'])?$parts['port']:80, $errno, $errstr, $timeout_in_seconds);
//if ($fp == FALSE)
// echo "Couldn't open a socket to ".$url." (".$errstr.")<br><br>";
// Data goes in the path for a GET request
if ('GET' == $type)
$parts['path'] .= '?'.$post_string;
$out = "$type ".$parts['path']." HTTP/1.1\r\n";
$out.= "Host: ".$parts['host']."\r\n";
$out.= "Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded\r\n";
$out.= "Content-Length: ".strlen($post_string)."\r\n";
$out.= "Connection: Close\r\n\r\n";
// Data goes in the request body for a POST request
if ('POST' == $type && isset($post_string))
$out.= $post_string;
fwrite($fp, $out);
fclose($fp);
}