Splitting PHP script to avoid timeout

Question

I have the following script which is used to PDF some pages on a website:

<? 
    include_once('phpToPDF.php') ; 
    phptopdf_url( 'http://www.example.com/csb04-termination-box/?style=alt' ,'pdf/', 'csb04-termination-box.pdf'); 
    phptopdf_url( 'http://www.example.com/csb05-termination-box/?style=alt' ,'pdf/', 'csb05-termination-box.pdf');  
    phptopdf_url( 'http://www.example.com/csb06-compact-termination-box/?style=alt' ,'pdf/', 'csb06-compact-termination-box.pdf');
    echo 'Done';
?>

The problem I have is if I add many more pages the server times out before the script has finished running. I've tried changing set_time_limit(0); but that hasn't helped (on shared hosting).

What would be the best way to amend the script so it can finish? I considered trying to split it in to multiple scripts and running it via ajax but not sure where to start with that as have no prior experience with it.

Tom van der Woerdt · Accepted Answer · 2013-03-18 17:27:18Z

3

The easiest way to do it would be this :

include_once('phpToPDF.php') ; 
$i = isset($_GET['i']) ? intval($_GET['i']) : 0;

if ($i == 0) phptopdf_url( 'http://www.example.com/csb04-termination-box/?style=alt' ,'pdf/', 'csb04-termination-box.pdf'); 
if ($i == 1) phptopdf_url( 'http://www.example.com/csb05-termination-box/?style=alt' ,'pdf/', 'csb05-termination-box.pdf');  
if ($i == 2) phptopdf_url( 'http://www.example.com/csb06-compact-termination-box/?style=alt' ,'pdf/', 'csb06-compact-termination-box.pdf');

if ($i < 3) header('Location: ?i=' . ($i + 1));
echo 'Done';

Basically this lets your webbrowser do the counting, without using Ajax. When one request is done, the browser automatically loads the next page, until the counter ($i) is at 3.

answered Mar 18, 2013 at 17:27

Tom van der Woerdt

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3 Comments

Vince P Over a year ago

Is there a way to include an on screen update of progress easily with this? Just like an echo'1/3' after processing the first one and so on...

Vince P Over a year ago

aha.... just come across a problem with this.. "Error 310 (net::ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS): There were too many redirects."

Tom van der Woerdt Over a year ago

You could probably try using JavaScript redirects (<script>window.location='?i=1';</script>) or HTML redirects (<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="1;url=?i=1">), which both let you output data to the screen.

Jocelyn · Accepted Answer · 2013-03-18 17:38:24Z

Use the following script to process all your files, one at a time:

include_once('phpToPDF.php') ; 

$urls = array();
$urls[] = array('http://www.example.com/csb04-termination-box/?style=alt', 'csb04-termination-box.pdf');
$urls[] = array('http://www.example.com/csb05-termination-box/?style=alt', 'csb05-termination-box.pdf');
$urls[] = array('http://www.example.com/csb06-termination-box/?style=alt', 'csb06-termination-box.pdf');
// add here more elements in $urls if needed

if(!isset($_GET['n']))
    $n = 0;
else
    $n = intval($_GET['n']);

if(isset($urls[$n]))
{
    phptopdf_url($urls[$n][0] ,'pdf/', $urls[$n][1]); 
    header('Location: ?n='.($n+1)); // calls the conversion of the next file in the $urls array
}
else
    echo 'Done';

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