file_get_contents() question

[tarlejh]

So I'm using file_get_contents to retrieve an XML file over HTTP. I'm using ini_set() to time out the default socket at 5 seconds.

 

In my code, I am parsing the XML into an simple 2D array which I iterate through after checking that it is not empty:

 

if ( !empty($myarray) ) { 
 //break; 
} else {  
 //assign hardcoded data to $myarray  
} 

//iterate through $myarray 

 

or something to that effect.

 

A problem arises that sometimes the array is empty, maybe one out of every 50 page loads or so. Can't seem to determine why this could be, except that file_get_contents() is taking longer than 5 seconds.

 

Yet I've timed that particular call (in a dev environment) and cannot get it to take longer than 3/100 of a second.

 

Any help from the community with this vexing issue is much appreciated.

 

 

[Brian W]

it could be a hiccup in the server... don't know the cause, but it happens every once in a while even on the sturdiest server. I've had it happen on both IIS 5-7 and different releases of Apache.