file() and setting a timeout

[sde]

i have a site where i pull a file in remotely from another url. for example:

PHP Code:

<?
$array = file("http://somehost/somefile.txt");

foreach($array as $each)
{
  echo "$each <br>\n";
}
?>

sometimes it is possible that this remote file will not be available. if it is not available, the code above will cause the page to hang, and then print an error.

i want it to spend 1 second max checking for this file, .. and if it doesn't find it, then print "not available"

what would be the best way to go about this? maybe using curl? is there any other way?

[idx]

I've looked at this various times in the past, but never came up with anything. Let me know if you find something that works.

-r

[joe_bruin]

well, now you're getting into deep networking land, and probably a bit out of the scope of php's file implementation.

you would probably want to use non-blocking sockets and implement the http transaction yourself. seems that php's socket functions are pretty young at the moment, so it might be safer to write an external program that will accomplish this for you. if you want to stick to php, here's an example someone posted on the php.net socket_connect() comment section (although the right way to do this would have been to use select() instead of continuous connecting).

PHP Code:

<?
   $host = "127.0.0.1";
   $port = "80";
   $timeout = 15;  //timeout in seconds

   $socket = socket_create(AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, SOL_TCP)
     or die("Unable to create socket\n");

   socket_set_nonblock($socket)
     or die("Unable to set nonblock on socket\n");

   $time = time();
   while (!@socket_connect($socket, $host, $port))
   {
     $err = socket_last_error($socket);
     if ($err == 115 || $err == 114)
     {
       if ((time() - $time) >= $timeout)
       {
         socket_close($socket);
         die("Connection timed out.\n");
       }
       sleep(1);
       continue;
     }
     die(socket_strerror($err) . "\n");
   }

   socket_set_block($this->socket)
     or die("Unable to set block on socket\n");
?>

[sde]

thanks joe. for my application sockets turned out to be the best way to go.

i was running a few tests with php sockets a few months back, and everything seems to be ok if the server you are calling is linux. there seems to be a bug with php socket functions and windows though.

i ended up using a socket script for this one, but in an indirect way. the server i was reading the file from is a game server, and i have other scripts which connect and check game status. if the server doesn't respond, then i just don't try to read the file.

basically the same thing you are showing here.

another option is curl too: http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.curl-setopt.php .. you must have the curl extention installed correctly though. it can be a pain, especially if you are developing or hosting on windows. if curl is installed and running correctly on the server, you can use the set_opt TIMEOUT to read a file. curl is great! i use it for sending and receiving xml securely with ups.