如何在后台执行 PHP 脚本？

Question

I have a code script like this:

public function getList(){

    // codes here

    // One month passed from the last fetch
    if ( true ) {
        $this->doTheJob();
    }

    return $data;
} 

public function doTheJob(){

    sleep(10); // simplified for a google API fetch/crawling

    // Insert something in the database
}

All I want to do is getting the $data quickly when I call getList() . In other words, I want to return the result immediately without waiting 10 secs. So I need to call doTheJob() in the background (probably called "parallel process" or "independent process").

Any idea how can I do that?

Answer 1

Easiest way should be when you execute your doTheJob() task in a cronjob every N minutes, write the result to a read optimized database projection when getList() calls, read the database projection. If you have not problem the data is max N minutes old and its computing a lot, this could work.

Another alternative without those drawbacks, but more complex: Setup a rabbitmq service. The process which modifies the data saves a "something changed" event to the queue. Create another php script as a rabbitmq listener which listens to the "something changed" event and then applies the changes to your read optimized database. The data will always be updated on time, there is no computing overhead.

Rabbitmq Library for php: https://github.com/php-amqplib/php-amqplib