Detecting a timeout for a block of code in PHP

Question

Is there a way you can abort a block of code if it\'s taking too long in PHP? Perhaps something like:

//Set the max time to 2 seconds
$time = new TimeOut(2);
$ti         


        

Answer 1

You can't really do that if you script pauses on one command (for example sleep()) besides forking, but there are a lot of work arounds for special cases: like asynchronous queries if you programm pauses on DB query, proc_open if you programm pauses at some external execution etc. Unfortunately they are all different so there is no general solution.

If you script waits for a long loop/many lines of code you can do a dirty trick like this:

declare(ticks=1);

class Timouter {

    private static $start_time = false,
    $timeout;

    public static function start($timeout) {
        self::$start_time = microtime(true);
        self::$timeout = (float) $timeout;
        register_tick_function(array('Timouter', 'tick'));
    }

    public static function end() {
        unregister_tick_function(array('Timouter', 'tick'));
    }

    public static function tick() {
        if ((microtime(true) - self::$start_time) > self::$timeout)
            throw new Exception;
    }

}

//Main code
try {
    //Start timeout
    Timouter::start(3);

    //Some long code to execute that you want to set timeout for.
    while (1);
} catch (Exception $e) {
    Timouter::end();
    echo "Timeouted!";
}

but I don't think it is very good. If you specify the exact case I think we can help you better.