Multi-threading is possible in php
Yes you can do multi-threading in PHP with pthreads
From the PHP documentation:
pthreads is an object-orientated API that provides all of the tools needed for multi-threading in PHP. PHP applications can create, read, write, execute and synchronize with Threads, Workers and Threaded objects.
Warning:
The pthreads extension cannot be used in a web server environment. Threading in PHP should therefore remain to CLI-based applications only.
Simple Test
#!/usr/bin/php
<?php
class AsyncOperation extends Thread {
public function __construct($arg) {
$this->arg = $arg;
}
public function run() {
if ($this->arg) {
$sleep = mt_rand(1, 10);
printf('%s: %s -start -sleeps %d' . "\n", date("g:i:sa"), $this->arg, $sleep);
sleep($sleep);
printf('%s: %s -finish' . "\n", date("g:i:sa"), $this->arg);
}
}
}
// Create a array
$stack = array();
//Initiate Multiple Thread
foreach ( range("A", "D") as $i ) {
$stack[] = new AsyncOperation($i);
}
// Start The Threads
foreach ( $stack as $t ) {
$t->start();
}
?>
First Run
12:00:06pm: A -start -sleeps 5
12:00:06pm: B -start -sleeps 3
12:00:06pm: C -start -sleeps 10
12:00:06pm: D -start -sleeps 2
12:00:08pm: D -finish
12:00:09pm: B -finish
12:00:11pm: A -finish
12:00:16pm: C -finish
Second Run
12:01:36pm: A -start -sleeps 6
12:01:36pm: B -start -sleeps 1
12:01:36pm: C -start -sleeps 2
12:01:36pm: D -start -sleeps 1
12:01:37pm: B -finish
12:01:37pm: D -finish
12:01:38pm: C -finish
12:01:42pm: A -finish
Real World Example
error_reporting(E_ALL);
class AsyncWebRequest extends Thread {
public $url;
public $data;
public function __construct($url) {
$this->url = $url;
}
public function run() {
if (($url = $this->url)) {
/*
* If a large amount of data is being requested, you might want to
* fsockopen and read using usleep in between reads
*/
$this->data = file_get_contents($url);
} else
printf("Thread #%lu was not provided a URL\n", $this->getThreadId());
}
}
$t = microtime(true);
$g = new AsyncWebRequest(sprintf("http://www.google.com/?q=%s", rand() * 10));
/* starting synchronization */
if ($g->start()) {
printf("Request took %f seconds to start ", microtime(true) - $t);
while ( $g->isRunning() ) {
echo ".";
usleep(100);
}
if ($g->join()) {
printf(" and %f seconds to finish receiving %d bytes\n", microtime(true) - $t, strlen($g->data));
} else
printf(" and %f seconds to finish, request failed\n", microtime(true) - $t);
}
Since this question was asked in 2010, there has been real simplification in how to do simple multithreading with Python with map and pool.
The code below comes from an article/blog post that you should definitely check out (no affiliation) - Parallelism in one line: A Better Model for Day to Day Threading Tasks. I'll summarize below - it ends up being just a few lines of code:
from multiprocessing.dummy import Pool as ThreadPool
pool = ThreadPool(4)
results = pool.map(my_function, my_array)
Which is the multithreaded version of:
results = []
for item in my_array:
results.append(my_function(item))
Description
Map is a cool little function, and the key to easily injecting parallelism into your Python code. For those unfamiliar, map is something lifted from functional languages like Lisp. It is a function which maps another function over a sequence.
Map handles the iteration over the sequence for us, applies the function, and stores all of the results in a handy list at the end.
Implementation
Parallel versions of the map function are provided by two libraries:multiprocessing, and also its little known, but equally fantastic step child:multiprocessing.dummy.
multiprocessing.dummy
is exactly the same as multiprocessing module, but uses threads instead (an important distinction - use multiple processes for CPU-intensive tasks; threads for (and during) I/O):
multiprocessing.dummy replicates the API of multiprocessing, but is no more than a wrapper around the threading module.
import urllib2
from multiprocessing.dummy import Pool as ThreadPool
urls = [
'http://www.python.org',
'http://www.python.org/about/',
'http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/python/2003/04/17/metaclasses.html',
'http://www.python.org/doc/',
'http://www.python.org/download/',
'http://www.python.org/getit/',
'http://www.python.org/community/',
'https://wiki.python.org/moin/',
]
# Make the Pool of workers
pool = ThreadPool(4)
# Open the URLs in their own threads
# and return the results
results = pool.map(urllib2.urlopen, urls)
# Close the pool and wait for the work to finish
pool.close()
pool.join()
And the timing results:
Single thread: 14.4 seconds
4 Pool: 3.1 seconds
8 Pool: 1.4 seconds
13 Pool: 1.3 seconds
Passing multiple arguments (works like this only in Python 3.3 and later):
To pass multiple arrays:
results = pool.starmap(function, zip(list_a, list_b))
Or to pass a constant and an array:
results = pool.starmap(function, zip(itertools.repeat(constant), list_a))
If you are using an earlier version of Python, you can pass multiple arguments via this workaround).
(Thanks to user136036 for the helpful comment.)
Best Answer
Create a function that you want the thread to execute, eg:
Now create the
thread
object that will ultimately invoke the function above like so:(You need to
#include <thread>
to access thestd::thread
class)The constructor's arguments are the function the thread will execute, followed by the function's parameters. The thread is automatically started upon construction.
If later on you want to wait for the thread to be done executing the function, call:
(Joining means that the thread who invoked the new thread will wait for the new thread to finish execution, before it will continue its own execution).
The Code
More information about std::thread here
-std=c++0x -pthread
.