Re: simpleXML - simplexml_load_file() timeout?

On Mon, 2006-04-10 at 17:46, darren kirby wrote: > quoth the Robert Cummings: > > > > Why do you do this on every request? Why not have a cron job retrieve an > > update every 20 minutes or whatnot and stuff it into a database table > > for your page to access? Then if the cron fails to retrieve the feed it > > can just leave the table as is, and your visitors can happily view > > slightly outdated feeds? Additionally this will be so much faster that > > your users might even hang around on your site :) > > This is a very interesting idea, but I am not sure if it is suitable for me at > this point. First of all, one feed in particular can change in a matter of > seconds, and I do want it to be as up to date as possible. Secondly, this is > just for my personal site which is very low traffic, and it is not > inconceivable that getting the feed every 20 minutes by cron would be _more_ > taxing on the network than simply grabbing it per request... > > And to be fair, when everything is working as it should the feeds are > retrieved in a matter of seconds, and I don't think it is annoying my users > at all. It is the 0.5% of requests when the remote site is overloaded (or > just plain down) that I want to provision for here. > > I do like this idea of caching the feed though. I think in my situation > though, rather than prefetching the feed at regular intervals it may be > better to cache the most recent request, and check the age of the cache when > the next request comes. This way, I would not be needlessly updating it for > those times when the page with my feeds goes for a few hours without a > request. > > Of course, this still wouldn't solve my original problem. Well personal websites break all the rules. There's nobody to answer to but yourself :) Looks like simplexml neglected to offer a timeout option. You would probably be better off using curl to retrieve the content, then using simplexml_load_string(). Curl does allow you to assign a timeout. Cheers, Rob. -- .------------------------------------------------------------. | InterJinn Application Framework - http://www.interjinn.com | :------------------------------------------------------------: | An application and templating framework for PHP. Boasting | | a powerful, scalable system for accessing system services | | such as forms, properties, sessions, and caches. InterJinn | | also provides an extremely flexible architecture for | | creating re-usable components quickly and easily. | `------------------------------------------------------------'