This may be obvious, but:
Note that is MUCH faster to use use a single instance to make a series of curl requests rather than creating a new instance for each request.
(PHP 4 >= 4.0.2, PHP 5, PHP 7, PHP 8)
curl_init — Initialize a cURL session
Initializes a new session and returns a cURL handle.
url
If provided, the CURLOPT_URL option will be set
to its value. This can be set manually using the
curl_setopt() function.
Note:
The
fileprotocol is disabled by cURL if open_basedir is set.
Returns a cURL handle on success, false on errors.
| Version | Description |
|---|---|
| 8.0.0 | On success, this function returns a CurlHandle instance now; previously, a resource was returned. |
| 8.0.0 |
url is nullable now.
|
Example #1 Initializing a new cURL session and fetching a web page
<?php
// Initializes a new cURL session
$ch = curl_init();
// Set URL and other appropriate options
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, "http://www.example.com/");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);
// Grab URL and pass it to the browser
curl_exec($ch);
?>This may be obvious, but:
Note that is MUCH faster to use use a single instance to make a series of curl requests rather than creating a new instance for each request.NextgenThemes' note is applicable for very very limited situations. For completeness's sake, let's consider the following code snippet:
<?php
/*
Your localhost has a default Apache which simply returns "It works!"
*/
$repeatCount = 1000;
// begin section
// this section is slow
// call localhost, create new handle each time
$time = microtime(true);
foreach (range(1, $repeatCount) as $ignored) {
$ch = curl_init("http://localhost");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
$response = curl_exec($ch);
// do something with the response
unset($response);
curl_close($ch);
}
unset($ch);
$elapsed = microtime(true) - $time;
echo "Recreate curl handle, time taken: " . $elapsed . "\n";
// end section
// begin section
// this section is much faster
// call localhost, but reuse the handle
$time = microtime(true);
$ch = curl_init("http://localhost");
foreach (range(1, $repeatCount) as $ignored) {
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
$response = curl_exec($ch);
// do something with the response
unset($response);
}
curl_close($ch);
$elapsed = microtime(true) - $time;
echo "Reuse curl handle, time taken: " . $elapsed . "\n";
// end section
/*
Example output:
Recreate curl handle, time taken: 11.289301872253
Reuse curl handle, time taken: 0.53790807723999
*/
?>
The above code supports the claim by NextgenThemes, however the "send curl requests in sequence" method in general is unnecessarily slow because:
- network transfer time (e.g. 100ms)
- remote processing time (e.g. 50ms)
- usually, no need to send requests in specific sequence
So, in practice, when you need to send multiple curl requests at the same time, just use the curl_multi_init method. Don't consider the "send curl requests in sequence" method unless you have very very specific/special needs.