Send multiple xml requests in parallel in PHP? Possible?

I have a script that makes calls to an XML api on a remote server. Currently my script sends 10 requests serially to the remote server. It fully processes each request before sending the next one. This is a huge bottleneck for my server at the moment since each API request can take up to a second each. Since most of the time is spent waiting for the remote server to respond, I'm wondering if/how I can send the requests in parallel so that all 10 requests use the same one second latency instead of ten one second latencies...

I thought about calling the script 10 times using a system command and running them in the background to ef开发者_如何学JAVAfectively create 10 processes, but I'm not sure if that's the best way to do it. I figure this problem has probably been solved before.

Yes, you can use curl. See here in the manual.

You can also use non-blocking I/O.

If you can use system command, then it is possible.

1. Create php scripts what do the request and write the response data to files (10 files in total)
2. Write a php script that call system command to run those 10 php script above, then wait for all executions is done
3. Read the response data from files

PHP doesn't support threads, but you use curl_multi.

That will send your requests in parallel. This is a good solution because most of the time you are waiting on the network anyway.

If you design carefully (use a queue for urls, issue a processing callback when each one is done) you won't have to wait until the longest request is finished

What you're looking for is probably asynchronous calls. It can be done a couple of different ways in PHP depending on the version you're using. Some great information on it in this question: Asynchronous PHP calls?