quoth the Robert Cummings: > On Mon, 2006-04-10 at 17:46, darren kirby wrote: > > quoth the Robert Cummings: > > > Why do you do this on every request? Why not have a cron job retrieve > > > an update every 20 minutes or whatnot and stuff it into a database > > > table for your page to access? Then if the cron fails to retrieve the > > > feed it can just leave the table as is, and your visitors can happily > > > view slightly outdated feeds? Additionally this will be so much faster > > > that your users might even hang around on your site :) > > > > This is a very interesting idea, but I am not sure if it is suitable for > > me at this point. First of all, one feed in particular can change in a > > matter of seconds, and I do want it to be as up to date as possible. > > Secondly, this is just for my personal site which is very low traffic, > > and it is not inconceivable that getting the feed every 20 minutes by > > cron would be _more_ taxing on the network than simply grabbing it per > > request... > > > > And to be fair, when everything is working as it should the feeds are > > retrieved in a matter of seconds, and I don't think it is annoying my > > users at all. It is the 0.5% of requests when the remote site is > > overloaded (or just plain down) that I want to provision for here. > > > > I do like this idea of caching the feed though. I think in my situation > > though, rather than prefetching the feed at regular intervals it may be > > better to cache the most recent request, and check the age of the cache > > when the next request comes. This way, I would not be needlessly updating > > it for those times when the page with my feeds goes for a few hours > > without a request. > > > > Of course, this still wouldn't solve my original problem. > > Well personal websites break all the rules. There's nobody to answer to > but yourself :) > > Looks like simplexml neglected to offer a timeout option. You would > probably be better off using curl to retrieve the content, then using > simplexml_load_string(). Curl does allow you to assign a timeout. That's the ticket! Thanks a lot for your help. > Cheers, > Rob. -d > .------------------------------------------------------------. > > | InterJinn Application Framework - http://www.interjinn.com | > | > :------------------------------------------------------------: > : > | An application and templating framework for PHP. Boasting | > | a powerful, scalable system for accessing system services | > | such as forms, properties, sessions, and caches. InterJinn | > | also provides an extremely flexible architecture for | > | creating re-usable components quickly and easily. | > > `------------------------------------------------------------' -- darren kirby :: Part of the problem since 1976 :: http://badcomputer.org "...the number of UNIX installations has grown to 10, with more expected..." - Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson, June 1972
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