PHP Script Timeout

Question

I have a custom script for a bulletin board system that counts the number of threads a user has made, and updates a column accordingly. This works fine, however with 100,000+ users, it times out when running it for the first time.

I've tried adding the following before the query, but it still times out (500 error).

set_time_limit(0);
ignore_user_abort(true);

Additional: I'm using this script on my vps.

Query:

set_time_limit(0); 
ignore_user_abort(true);

$db->write_query("ALTER TABLE `".TABLE_PREFIX."users` ADD `numthreads` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL default '0'");

// load users into an array to count number of threads
$query = $db->simple_select("users", "uid");
while($user = $db->fetch_array($query))
{
    $users[$user['uid']] = $user;
}

foreach($users as $user)
{   
    $query = $db->simple_select("threads", "COUNT(tid) AS threads", "uid = '{$user['uid']}'");

    // get total number of threads
    $numthreads = intval($db->fetch_field($query, "threads"));

    $db->update_query("users", array("numthreads" => $numthreads), "uid = '{$user['uid']}'");
}

Answer 1

Use this:

ini_set('max_execution_time', 0);

Inplace of:

set_time_limit(0); 
ignore_user_abort(true);

You can also edit php.ini:

max_execution_time = 60; //Maximum execution time of each script, in seconds
max_input_time = 60; //Maximum amount of time each script may spend parsing request data

Hope this helps.

Answer 2

First you should separate your ALTER statement. Execute the ALTER first and then do the rest. Alter table can be expensive in time if you have a big table. You can run it manually, using phpmyadmin or via shell (even better since there's no php timeout). which will give you the ability to not timeout.

Then remove the ALTER from the script and run it.

and then use:

$query = $db->simple_select("users", "uid");
while($user = $db->fetch_array($query))
{
    $query = $db->simple_select("threads", "COUNT(tid) AS threads", "uid = '{$user['uid']}'");

    $numthreads = intval($db->fetch_field($query, "threads"));
    $db->update_query("users", array("numthreads" => $numthreads), "uid = '{$user['uid']}'");
}

Answer 3

try this

ini_alter ("max_execution_time", 600000000);
$tmp = ini_get ( "max_execution_time" );
set_time_limit(600000000);

Answer 4

A common reason that people are not able to change the max execution time is that their host does not allow them to. Make sure to find out that they do not block this.