My website has source pages that use ob_start() and $content = ob_get_clean(). Inside them I'm using a function multiple times that uses curl and bing to translate words/phrases into a specified language.
If the translation has been done before it looks it up in a database, otherwise it gets a reply from bing in series. I want it to do it in parallel so that it translates the page a lot faster. Any ideas?
PHP Doesn't natively support Parallel processing indeed. There are however, ways to simulate it as shown on this page: http://www.d-mueller.de/blog/parallel-processing-in-php/
The idea behind it, is that you make a process manager or something similar that manages the threads running on the background and checks their status. Because they are background processes, you can start multiple of them. You manager can than continue your script when they are all done.
Unfortunately I think in PHP there is no parallel processing. The only way to simulate parallel processing as far as I know would be to use a clever cron job, and initiate multiple instance of it.
cron job is doing that, it's definitely not clever. You can, technically, use something like system('/path/to/php /path/to/script.php &'); as the & will allow the return to the page without waiting for script.php to finish, but that really shouldn't be used either.
& at the end of the command will drop you out of system and let your script continue - which would technically be a parallel process, though you won't get a return from it.Several parallel php processes(not threads) can be done with gearman try http://gearman.org/ for gearman
