sleeping a REST call

[knowramphp]

I am using curl to work with a REST API which is working great to perform the calls however there are times that based on server load on the far end I get a response to my rest call asking to try again in 200+ seconds. simply putting a sleep() step in to wait doesn't seem like the best option as the over all script stops and then often times times out. is there a way to offload the retry to a different script and schedule it to run in x seconds with php? 

[Jacques1]

200 seconds? What kind of service is this?

 

Sounds like you'll need a very different approach to overcome those extreme limitations. You should refrain from making straightforward HTTP requests. Instead, create a queue (which can be a simple database table) to hold the request data. Whenever you want to make a request, you append it to the queue. Then set up a cron job which regularly executes a PHP script, ideally when the remote service isn't too busy. This script picks the first entry from the queue and tries to make a request. If that succeeds, it processes the response, removes the queue entry and stops (or makes another request), otherwise it just stops and tries again next time.

[gizmola]

This seems like a chicken/egg problem.

 

If your program worked reliably you could have it exit with a return value which could perhaps, if positive, be the number of seconds the program should wait before the next run.

 

A simple shell script could then wrap your script in an infinite loop. Unix has a simple built in sleep() function. In your loop, using sh/bash you take the return value and if > 0, use that to sleep in the shell script.

 

The problem with this and any other more involved solution is that it depends on your script not locking up. Unless I misunderstood, that is not the situation now, so you would need to solve the reliability issue for anything better to work.