Re: Possible?

On Fri, April 28, 2006 6:13 pm, René Fournier wrote: > Simple problem: Many client apps need to send data to a server. > > By default each client will open a persistent TCP socket connection > to a common IP address:port (10.10.10.10:1234) and write to it (which > the server will save/log, etc.). > > My question is, what should be ready to listen at the IP:port? I was > thinking of writing a PHP command-line socket server that listens at > that port. But there will be a potentially huge number of clients > connecting simultaneously (1000s), not transmitting a lot of data per > se, but a lot of connections... Bring it on. [bunny] The PHP script you write just has to NOT QUIT, but keep on going and going and going and... [/bunny] > Anyway, instead I thought writing a > simple PHP script—say, listener.php—that gets executed by the web > server and enters a socket_read loop until the client terminates the > connection (set_time_limit(0)). Don't tie up your HTTP connections for this. > Does this sound like a good way to do it? This way, Apache handles > all the connections, and PHP is instantiated each time, but without > having to fork processes, etc, and without having to do PHP CLI. You're making life WAY too complicated for yourself! > Anyway, I've started looking at this, but I'm not quite sure if it's > even possible. I mean, can "something" send a request to Apache, and > continue to write data along that TCP socket? Normally, HTTP requests > include GET or POST for such data, but this is not a a web browser > that's opening the connection. You probably can't do this, and even if you could, you don't WANT to do this! > Hope I'm somewhat clear. Just struggling through some options > here.... Anyway, thanks in advance for any suggestions. You should try the simple solution first: http://php.net/sockets The "talkback" server example there is a good starter kit. You then just need to have it be able to handle the connections and put the data somewhere -- A MySQL ISAM table is probably the easiest and most likely to handle the volume you want, at a guess... If THAT is not fast enough, then your next move is not to try and hack Apache to get a "pool" going, but to find something LIKE the Apache dispatcher to wrap around your server. Or, possibly, consider setting up a "pool" of hardware to handle the connections. But first, make sure that the straightforward approach is "too slow" before you get yourself all bent out of shape trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist. :-) -- Like Music? http://l-i-e.com/artists.htm