How to prevent timeout on slow scripts?

[CT Internet]

Hi There,

I am looking for some advise.

I am building a script that once a week runs through a databases and finds matches to specific queries and then emails those matches to an email address (real estate web site).

My issue is timeout and throttling.

I have used set_time_limit(0); in the beginning of the script and then used sleep(3); to sleep the script for 3 seconds before redirecting the script to itself (via http) and send the next email.

The reason for the 3 seconds is that my hosting company requires me to throttle email sending to not slow down the server.

Anyway... I then invoke the script via cron (with the php command) and it appears to work fine.

My question is... is there a better or more correct way to do this?

I am afraid that Apache will somehow see this script calling itself many times and then suspend it thinking that it is an endless loop.

[musher]

If you are calling it via the php command (CLI), surely the redirect will not be working, unless you are using fopen?

[CT Internet]

Hi, thanks for replying.

Hmm... I am not sure. This is a Joomla based web site and I am using the following cron task:

php /home/sitename/public_html/index2.php option=com_property task=tasktosendoutemails

And it seems to work just fine

Then in the script (at the very end - I use the built in Joomla function called mosRedirect() which besides a few error checks uses the following code:

if (headers_sent()) {
  echo "<script>document.location.href='$url';</script>\n";
} else {
  @ob_end_clean(); // clear output buffer
  header( 'HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently' );
  header( "Location: ". $url );
} 

I then pass the full url as argument into that function.

But I am after the best practice solution and of course eager to find any loopholes or bugs as well.