Execute a file in parallel / multithreading in PHP

Question

I have a cron file cron/cron1.php. i have set up this for cron running 1 minute.

so for next process it will take 1 minute to execute.

now i want to run this file parallel three times in minute. this file takes execution time more than 2 min.

can i run this file parallel in a single file like this

file1.php

<?php
      include("cron/cron1.php"); // run seperately
      sleep(5);
      include("cron/cron1.php"); // run seperately
       sleep(5);
      include("cron/cron1.php"); // run seperately 

?>

in above file cron1.php will execute 5 seconds difference but when above one is completed its process. as i told you each cron1.php will takes more than 2 minutes to complete. so i couldn't achieve it.

is there any process or multithreading or approch so that i can run each cron1.php every 5 seconds delay. then i will set the file1.php as a cron job.

Answer 1

PHP DOES SUPPORT MULTI-THREADING

http://php.net/pthreads

Here is a multi-threaded example of the kind of logic you require:

<?php
define("SECOND", 1000000);
define("LOG",    Mutex::create());

/*
 * Log safely to stdout
 * @param string message the format string for log
 * @param ... args       the arguments for sprintf
 * @return void
 */
function slog($message, $args = []) {
    $args = func_get_args();
    if ((count($args) > 0) &&
        ($message = array_shift($args))) {
        $time = microtime(true);
        Mutex::lock(LOG);
        echo vsprintf(  
            "{$time}: {$message}\n", $args);
        Mutex::unlock(LOG);
    }
}

class MyTask extends Thread {
    public $id;
    public $done;

    public function __construct($id) {
        $this->id = $id;
        $this->done = false;
    }

    public function run() {
        slog("%s#%d entered ...", __CLASS__, $this->id);
        /* don't use sleep in threads */
        $this->synchronized(function(){
            /* simulate some work */
            $this->wait(10 * SECOND);
        });
        slog("%s#%d leaving ...", __CLASS__, $this->id);
        $this->done = true;
    }
}

$threads = [];

function get_next_id(&$threads) {
    foreach ($threads as $id => $thread) {
        if ($thread->done) {
            return $id;
        }
    }
    return count($threads);
}

do {
    slog("Main spawning ...");
    $id = get_next_id($threads);
    $threads[$id] = new MyTask($id);
    $threads[$id]->start();
    slog("Main sleeping ...");
    usleep(5 * SECOND); 
} while (1);
?>

This will spawn a new thread every 5 seconds, the threads take 10 seconds to execute.

You should try to find ways of increasing the speed of individual tasks, perhaps by sharing some common set of data.