PHP - set time limit effectively

Question

I have a simple script that makes redirection to mobile version of a website if it finds that user is browsing on mobile phone. It uses Tera-WURFL webservice to acomplish that and it will be placed on other hosting than Tera-WURFL itself. I want to protect it, in case of Tera-WURFL hosting downtime. In other words, if my script takes more than a second to run, then stop executing it and just redirect to regular website. How to do it effectively (so that the CPU would not be overly burdened by the script)?

EDIT: It looks that TeraWurflRemoteClient class have a timeout property. Read below. Now I need to find how to include it in my script, so that it would redirect to regular website in case of this timeout.

Here is the script:

// Instantiate a new TeraWurflRemoteClient object
$wurflObj = new TeraWurflRemoteClient('http://my-Tera-WURFL-install.pl/webservicep.php');

// Define which capabilities you want to test for. Full list: http://wurfl.sourceforge.net/help_doc.php#product_info
$capabilities = array("product_info");

// Define the response format (XML or JSON)
$data_format = TeraWurflRemoteClient::$FORMAT_JSON;

// Call the remote service (the first parameter is the User Agent - leave it as null to let TeraWurflRemoteClient find the user agent from the server global variable)
$wurflObj->getCapabilitiesFromAgent(null, $capabilities, $data_format);

// Use the results to serve the appropriate interface
if ($wurflObj->getDeviceCapability("is_tablet") || !$wurflObj->getDeviceCapability("is_wireless_device") || $_GET["ver"]=="desktop") {
    header('Location: http://website.pl/'); //default index file
} else {
header('Location: http://m.website.pl/'); //where to go
}
?>

And here is source of TeraWurflRemoteClient.php that is being included. It has optional timeout argument as mentioned in documentation:

// The timeout in seconds to wait for the server to respond before giving up
$timeout = 1;

Adelf · Accepted Answer · 2012-04-28 09:19:13Z

3

TeraWurflRemoteClient class have a timeout property. And it is 1 second by default, as I see in documentation. So, this script won't be executed longer than a second.

answered Apr 28, 2012 at 9:19

Adelf

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4 Comments

jukooz Over a year ago

Thank you. I just found it. How to use it in my script so that it will redirect to desktop website in case of this timeout?

Adelf Over a year ago

You already wrote the right way. Try to use catch(Exception) block. Add there header('Location: website.pl/'); and exit; Try{..getCapabilitiesFromAgent(... } catch(Exception $ex) {.. redirect to default site...}

jukooz Over a year ago

I finally did this and couldn't use header() here (because there is already output from TeraWurflRemoteClient.php in case of exception). I used printf("<script>location.href='google.com'</script>"); but it firstly prints warning and "redirect" then. Is there any way to not see warning?

Adelf Over a year ago

Seems like the option display_errors is turned on your in php.ini. You can change it there. It is not good to show php error in production site. It's useful only in developer machine. If you haven'ty access to php.ini just try to write ini_set('display_errors', 0); somewhere in beginning of php script.

Ashfame · Accepted Answer · 2012-04-28 09:21:39Z

Try achieving this by setting a very short timeout on the HTTP request to TeraWurfl inside their class, so that if the response doesn't come back in like 2-3 secs, consider the check to be false and show the full website.

The place to look for setting a shorter timeout might vary depending on the transport you use to make your HTTP request. Like in Curl you can set the timeout for the HTTP request.

After this do reset your HTTP request timeout back to what it was so that you don't affect any other code.

Also I found this while researching on it, you might want to give it a read, though I would say stay away from forking unless you are very well aware of how things work.

And just now Adelf posted that TeraWurflRemoteClient class has a timeout of 1 sec by default, so that solves your problem but I will post my answer anyway.

Thank you. It's little bit too much for my very poor skills regarding the subject. Now I just need to find how to use TeraWurlf timeout to serve my purpose.

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