PHP - IRC Bot Script Hanging - php

Question

I am having problem with my IRC Bot script, I have implemented it into my Curl transfer method.
I have a problem, once the IRC bot sends a message to the IRC channel, all of the "echo" at the end of the script does not show and the page hangs. The whole Apache hangs.
<?php
$ircServer = "///";
$ircPort = "6667";
$ircChannel = "#bots";
set_time_limit(0);
$msg = $_POST['msg'];
$paper = $_POST['paper'];
$sizzor = $_POST['sizzor'];
$hand = $_POST['hand'];
$ircSocket = fsockopen($ircServer, $ircPort, $eN, $eS);
if ($ircSocket)
{
fwrite($ircSocket, "USER Lost rawr.test lol :code\n");
fwrite($ircSocket, "NICK Rawr" . rand() . "\n");
fwrite($ircSocket, "JOIN " . $ircChannel . "\n");
ignore_user_abort(TRUE); // Noob Close down page
fwrite($ircSocket, "PRIVMSG " . $ircChannel . " :" . $msg . "\n");
while(1)
{
while($data = fgets($ircSocket, 128))
{
echo nl2br($data);
flush();
// Separate all data
$exData = explode(' ', $data);
// Send PONG back to the server
if($exData[0] == "PING")
{
fwrite($ircSocket, "PONG ".$exData[1]."\n");
}
}
echo $eS . ": " . $eN;
}
}
?>
if ($bootcontents == 'success') {
echo '<center><marquee behavior="alternate" direction="left">Spinning xxx at ' . $power . '% power.</marquee></center>';
This part does not show during the script:
if ($bootcontents == 'success') {
echo '<center><marquee behavior="alternate" direction="left">Spinning xxx at ' . $power . '% power.</marquee></center>';
The page just hangs, if I add the exit(); function onto near the top the whole "echo" info does not show.
Please can someone help.

Answer 1

You are creating an infinite loop:
while (1)
// ...
This loop can never finish, since you did not use an exit statement (like break). Therefore the code after the infinite loop is never executed.
Furthermore is it a busy loop (using a lot of CPU resources), so the whole apache (and computer) will hang.

Answer 2

You're leaving some lines out of the <?php ?> tags, so whatever is outside them will be treated as plain text. You fix it moving the closing ?> tags further down:
[this is the while(1) closing bracket]
}
// code past this line will never run, see below for details
echo $eS . ": " . $eN;
}
}
if ($bootcontents == 'success') {
echo '<center><marquee behavior="alternate" direction="left">Spinning xxx at ' . $power . '% power.</marquee></center>';
}
?> <!-- closing tag goes here -->
The page would anyway not work properly because the while(1) loop is missing an exit condition:
while(1) {
while($data = fgets($ircSocket, 128)) {
// ...
}
}
After the inner while finishes, your script keeps looping, ending up trapped in an empty, infinite loop (which would hang the server up, if it's not configured to detect and kill this kind of loophole).
On a final notice, PHP isn't probably the best tool for the job: you would be much better off with a stand-alone application.

Answer 3

while($data = fgets($ircSocket, 128))
This part blocks the script running until it receives data, and if somehow you're not getting data through that socket... well you're stuck there... forever... lol ok, stuck until the PHP script times out.
If that part doesn't catch, you're still stuck inside the while loop and so there is no way of ever running the part of your code that echos stuff out... so both apfelbox and Alex are correct, just not explained fully...
In order to have a infinite loop but also be able to run code outside, you would need to catch the "event" in which you want to capture and run code. All the events you want to capture would need to sit inside the while loop, or at least dispatched from the while loop to a function that would parse the input from server and respond correctly.
An even better way to do this is to utilise the observer pattern.
I really wouldn't make an IRC bot with PHP, even if you run it via commandline... PHP isn't meant to run as a long-running application.