Is it Possible to Make this "Get Image" Code Any Faster?

[jebego]

I'm writing some script that gets a few thousand images from google. I have all the URL's stored in an array. Here's my code that gets them all and puts them into a "mosaic":

function get_image($url) {
    $ch = curl_init();
    curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
    curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
    curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT, 0);
    $fileContents = curl_exec($ch);
    curl_close($ch);
    return imagecreatefromstring($fileContents);
}
$image_number = 0;
for($row = 0; $row < $rows; $row ++){	
	for($col = 0; $col < $columns; $col ++){		
		$copy_image = get_image($url_array[$image_number]);
		if(!$copy_image){
			$copy_image = get_image($url_array[$image_number - 1]);
		}
		$copy_image_width = imagesx($copy_image);
		$copy_image_height = imagesy($copy_image);
		if($copy_image_width > $copy_image_height){
			$copy_image_width = $copy_image_height;
		}else{
			$copy_image_height = $copy_image_width;
		}
		imagecopyresampled($final_image, $copy_image, $size * $col, $size * $row, 0, 0, $size, $size, $copy_image_width, $copy_image_height);
		$image_number ++;
	}
}

 

Basically what this code does is goes through my URL array, and referring to the function "get_image()" which uses cURL to get the image from google, then crops/resizes the images to match the others, and pastes it onto my "canvas", $copy_image.

 

Getting a few thousand images takes quite a while, and most of the script's time is used during the "get_image()" function calls.

 

Is there a way I can speed this process up?

[Mchl]

Get better connection to Google servers?

The thing that's slow is not your code, but connecting to remote servers.

[Daniel0]

Use the curl_multi_*() functions to download in parallel.

[jebego]

Thanks for the replys! Looking up curl_multi_* functions now!

[jd307]

I actually really like the sound of this, I'd be quite interested to see the end product when it is working.  The only advise that I have to offer here is in warning to be careful with obtaining images through Google:

 

1. Creating automated scripts to access any of Googles services are actually against their Terms of Service, section 5.3.

 

and 2. As you are probably already aware, many images are governed by copyright laws, etc.

 

Not to put a downer on your hard work, but thought I'd mention it.

[jebego]

Well, the project works much faster now

 

Thanks for the warning about google, gonna have to look that up.