PHP Asynchronous programming Spawning non-blocking processes with proc_open()

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Example

PHP has no support for running code concurrently unless you install extensions such as pthread. This can be sometimes bypassed by using proc_open() and stream_set_blocking() and reading their output asynchronously.

If we split code into smaller chunks we can run it as multiple suprocesses. Then using stream_set_blocking() function we can make each subprocess also non-blocking. This means we can spawn multiple subprocesses and then check for their output in a loop (similarly to an even loop) and wait until all of them finish.

As an example we can have a small subprocess that just runs a loop and in each iteration sleeps randomly for 100 - 1000ms (note, the delay is always the same for one subprocess).

<?php
// subprocess.php
$name = $argv[1];
$delay = rand(1, 10) * 100;
printf("$name delay: ${delay}ms\n");

for ($i = 0; $i < 5; $i++) {
    usleep($delay * 1000);
    printf("$name: $i\n");
}

Then the main process will spawn subprocesses and read their output. We can split it into smaller blocks:

<?php
// non-blocking-proc_open.php
// File descriptors for each subprocess.
$descriptors = [
    0 => ['pipe', 'r'], // stdin
    1 => ['pipe', 'w'], // stdout
];

$pipes = [];
$processes = [];
foreach (range(1, 3) as $i) {
    // Spawn a subprocess.
    $proc = proc_open('php subprocess.php proc' . $i, $descriptors, $procPipes);
    $processes[$i] = $proc;
    // Make the subprocess non-blocking (only output pipe).
    stream_set_blocking($procPipes[1], 0);
    $pipes[$i] = $procPipes;
}

// Run in a loop until all subprocesses finish.
while (array_filter($processes, function($proc) { return proc_get_status($proc)['running']; })) {
    foreach (range(1, 3) as $i) {
        usleep(10 * 1000); // 100ms
        // Read all available output (unread output is buffered).
        $str = fread($pipes[$i][1], 1024);
        if ($str) {
            printf($str);
        }
    }
}

// Close all pipes and processes.
foreach (range(1, 3) as $i) {
    fclose($pipes[$i][1]);
    proc_close($processes[$i]);
}

The output then contains mixture from all three subprocesses as they we're read by fread() (note, that in this case proc1 ended much earlier than the other two):

$ php non-blocking-proc_open.php 
proc1 delay: 200ms
proc2 delay: 1000ms
proc3 delay: 800ms
proc1: 0
proc1: 1
proc1: 2
proc1: 3
proc3: 0
proc1: 4
proc2: 0
proc3: 1
proc2: 1
proc3: 2
proc2: 2
proc3: 3
proc2: 3
proc3: 4
proc2: 4


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