Best way to distribute queue uniquely across php processes

Question

I have a set of unique values, and I want to give each request one of those.

Each value may only be distributed once. The order is not important. I'm looking for a good tool to do this.

I've been thinking about using MySQL with SELECT .. LIMIT 1 FOR UPDATE . Works, is there a way to select an unlocked row instead of waiting for the first lock the release?

I have tried using rabbitmq, registering each request as a consumer consuming just one message, but this method is slow. Taking almost a second over WAN.

Answer 1

from the comments

there seems to be quite some delay when connecting [to RMQ]

yes, there definitely is! in some cases, i've seen the connection take 5 to 10 second or more.

but the way we are supposed to manage RabbitMQ is to have a single open connection per application instance - open it when the app instance starts, and leave it open forever.

when we need to do work, create a channel on which to do the work.

channels are cheap and very fast to open and close, unlike connections.