keep getting MAX timeout error on urlencode - php

Question

I keep getting an error on this code:
<?php
function encode_object(&$obj) {
foreach ($obj as &$current) {
if (is_string($current) or is_object($current) or is_array($current)) {
if (is_object($current) or is_array($current)) {
encode_object($current);
}
if (is_string($current)) {
$current = urlencode($current);
}
}
}
}
?>
This code has worked before but for some reason every time a run it I get:
Fatal error: Maximum execution time of 30 seconds exceeded in * on line 9
What I'm trying to do is be able to give it an object, search through it and encode all of the strings.
I have tried multiple times but keep getting the same error
I am using:
Apache 2.2.15.0
PHP 5.3.3
Windows 7 Ultimate build 7600
EDIT:
The input I'm entering is an error that, after going through this function, is meant to be converted into JSON and read by javascript through ajax.
The input in this case would be:
array("error"=>
array(
"error"=>"error",
"number"=>2,
"message=>"json_encode() [<a href='function.json-encode'>function.json-encode<\/a>]: recursion detected",
"line"=>22))
That is another error that i will worry about later, but it seems that when I put
$obj['error']['message'] = 'blah';
on the object before I send it, the code works fine. So there is something about
json_encode() [<a href='function.json-encode'>function.json-encode<\/a>]: recursion detected
that urlencode seems to be having a problem with.

Answer 1

If it has worked before, then it seems there's nothing wrong with the code, just that the objects you're sending it are large and are taking longer to process than the default execution time set in PHP.
The quick and dirty way to handle this is to use the ini_set() function:
ini_set("max_execution_time",840); (in this case, 840 is 840/60 or 14 minutes)
I've used this before on a query with a particularly large result-set, one which took at minimum five minutes to load, and build the HTML for the page.
Note, this will not work if your host has "Safe Mode" enabled. In that case you actually have to change the setting in PHP.ini. Otherwise, I use this quick and dirty roundabout fairly often for ridiculously huge parsing/processing tasks.