runactions Follow @yiiframework

There seems to be an undocumented dependancy on something called "EHttpClient" - whats that about?

If you need to access the web user that initiated the request when running a background task, you might want to pass on the PHPSESSID cookie with the background request, please see this topic

I tried to use runBackground to read data from fingerprint machine and save to database, but still the server is time out.

Any help on this?

Try to test the touchUrl method at the server.

public function actionA() 
{
   Yii::log('Action A executed');
}
 
public function actionTestActionA ()
{
       ERunActions::touchUrl(Yii::app()->createAbsoluteUrl(... route to actionA ...));
       echo 'Backgroundjob started';
}

This should do a httprequest to actionA. You should be able to debug or log the code. This is how runBackground works, but only one action is used.

As pseudo-code for the runBackground method

public function actionRunBackgroundJob()
{
       if(this action is called by a 'touchUrl' request, means param _runaction_touch isset) 
      {
          do the background job only
      }
      else
      {
          a) do a touchUrl-Request to this action (without fetching html-data)
          b) show the user html code
      } 
 
}

I have updated the function and returns the url that it visits. I try to visit this url with wget from inside the server and it returns me to the message of the else statement

if(ERunActions::runBackground()){}else{echo 'error';}

which means the the url works but the code cannot run this method.

so it cannot run the ERunActions::runBackground() for a reason.

Please take a look at the runBackground function in ERunActions.php

It 'touches' the same controller action where 'runBackground' is called a second times. As I wrote in the comment of this function, the $request->getHostInfo() there can detect a not 'reachable url' when a server is behind a firewall (maybe '127.0.0.1' or '192.168.x.x is not really reachable...).

So you can try this:

Add a die($url) or Yii::log(...) there to get the url and try to call this url from inside your server/php enviroment (comandline: wget ...).

If this url doesn't work, you can set the param 'internalHostInfo' to a reachable scheme 'http://....'.

public static function runBackground($useHttpClient=false,$httpClientConfig=array(),$internalHostInfo=null)
    {
        if (!self::isTouchActionRequest())
        {
            $request = Yii::app()->request;
 
            $uri = $request->requestUri;
            $port = $request->getPort();
            $host = isset($internalHostInfo) ? $internalHostInfo : $request->getHostInfo();
            $url =  "$host:$port$uri";
 
                        die($url);
 
 
        else
            return true;
    }

Is there any Dependency in the php version because this ext it doesn't work in my server while locally works fine.

For cron/background tasks I typically have a controller written specifically to handle these requests. Inside your controller you add the following:

public function filters() {
    return array(
        'keyAuthentication'
    );
}
 
public function filterKeyAuthentication($filterChain) {
    if (!isset($_GET['key']) OR $_GET['key'] != Yii::app()->params['httpKey']) {
        throw new CHttpException(404, 'The system is unable to find the requested action "' . $this->action->id . '"');
    } else {
        $filterChain->run();
    }
}

where Yii::app()->params['httpKey'] is any security key/password that you can assign (i.e. use a hash algorithm to generate it).

The purpose of this filter is to authenticate anyone trying to access it via a GET key, and this performed before any action in the controller. If authentication fails then it returns a 404 error.

I don't use runBackground for actions which need authentication. Using the implementation above you can setup your touchUrl and add in the key as a GET parameter. (i.e http://www.myblog.com/backgroundtasks/sendemail?key=a123gasj3kasfl...)

That's it, now you can keep away unauthenticated users from triggering your cron/background actions.

adhoc answer - not tested:

runBackground calls 'touchUrl', that means, it's a simple httprequest to the same controller action where runBackground is called. But this request is sent from php, not from the browser and therefore - I think - this is an anonymus/guest request (because the php script is not authenticated).

Maybe you can build your rules as you would do, but you have to add an extra rule to allow to execute the action from the php-script (ip = 127.0.0.1 or the internal ip of your server)

How can ERunActions::runBackground() get around yii's access rules? It wont work unless I use it in a action that allows all users.

Thanks for your remark.

As referenced in the source the internal httpclient is a (quick) port from this code.

I will change the code to your bugfix in the next release.

If you're trying to use ERunActions::runBackground() inside an action which deals with form data. Most likely your $_POST will be a nested array. In this case an exception occurs "urlencode() expects parameter 1 to be string, array given".

I got around this by using PHP's native http_build_query() in components/ERunActionsHttpClient.php

if (isset($postData))
{
        if (is_array($postData))
        {
            $postdata_str = http_build_query($postData);
                foreach ($postData as $k => $v){
                        $postdata_str .= urlencode($k) .'='. urlencode(serialize($v)) .'&';
                    else
                        $postdata_str .= urlencode($k) .'='. urlencode($v) .'&';
                }
 
                $postdata_str = substr($postdata_str, 0, -1);
        }
        else
                $postdata_str = is_string($postData) ? $postData : serialize($postData);
}

I replaced it with this:

if (isset($postData))
{
        if (is_array($postData))
        {
            $postdata_str = http_build_query($postData);
        }
        else
            $postdata_str = is_string($postData) ? $postData : serialize($postData);
}

I suspect that by using this function you won't need the is_array conditional. And I'm also guessing it'll work for $_GET.

Anyway I've only tested for nested $_POST arrays and it's working for me.

Cheers, jc

Thanks for your answer. Another question - does runactions works with yii 1.1.9? Just upgraded, but seems it's not working. I have lines at log, that runactions executed succefully, but seems to be not, cause any data that must be changed by actions not changed.

You can create a cron.php that runs a script and in the script you can run the actions.

cron.php

return array(
   ERunActions::TYPE_SCRIPT  => array('script' => 'cronscript'),  //execute cronscript.php
);

runactions/config/scripts/cronscript.php

ERunactions::runAction(....);
  ERunactions::runAction(....);
  ERunactions::runAction(....);
  ....

You cannot set a interval in the runAction method only for the runactions widget. If you need different intervals you have to generate multiple urls/cronscripts (take a look at RunActionsController.php).

You can add different actions to your CronController like

public function actionCron1()
    {
        $this->widget('ERunActions',
        array(
               'config'=>'cron1', 
               'interval'=>3600, 
              )
        );
    }
 
  public function actionCron2()
    {
        $this->widget('ERunActions',
        array(
               'config'=>'cron2',
               'interval'=>1800, 
              )
        );
    }

Hello. Thanks for useful extension. I have a question: How to add multiple actions of one type in config file. I.e. i want to do something like this in my cron.php

return array(
    ERunActions::TYPE_ACTION  => array(
        array(
            'route' => 'route1',
            'interval' => interval1,
        ),
        array(
            'route' => 'route2',
            'interval' => interval2,
        ),
    ),
);

Please see this topic.

If you have problems with 'runBackground' add an action like below to a controller and check if you can find the log item in your logfile:

public function actionTest ()
{
        Yii::import('ext.runactions.components.ERunActions');
 
        if (ERunActions::runBackground())
        {
           Yii::log('Running actionTest in Background',CLogger::LEVEL_ERROR);
 
           Yii::app()->end(); 
        }
 
        echo "Do this now";
}

After reading extension documentation very difficult to understand how to use it. But really it's simple and useful. After hour of search found this forum topic where explained "How it's works" :)

Thanks for good extension. Save a lot of time.

the article you provided i v read , fsockopen limitation in that document may be the max size . it may only occur in loop or iteration environment. when using while or for statement it will cause that happens. if the script is long live it will cause some bad things happening such as memory leak ,memory exhaust, treasure handler waste (you see the db connection ,file handler ,socket are). i just use it to do async call in methods of controller or model not in console environment and no loop .

       thanks again , hope you will share your test result here when accomplish your tests .

another thing: Yii::import('ext.runactions.components.ERunAction'); should be Yii::import('ext.runactions.components.ERunActions'); if run as cron , are there some trick to stop the cron job ? i do the cron example but in the log file give me this error info: [error] [runactions] Invalid time interval - Last call: Allowed interval: 3600

runactions itself has no limitations. Touchurl does only a httprequest to the own or another http-server (without reading data).

A limitation can be the server performance, configured maxclients in apache ... etc. If your service (for example converting image, videos ...) is running at the same server the memory-limit can be a problem too.

You have to check about issues about the different request adapters of ehttpclient. For example, the internal httpclient or the default ehttpclient uses 'fsockopen'. There is an issue about this published (April, 2005) in the fsockopen PHP manual.

But when using touchUrlExt you can test with other adapters (curl,...) too.

I would set up a test-application with 'touchUrl'/'touchUrlExt' (sleep, log profiling....) in a loop and test different adapters from ehttpclient. The internal httpclient of the exentsion has no 'overhead' and should be the 'fastest', but only uses 'fsockopen'.

joblo : firstly great job! i want to use the async feature , but don't clear if it has connection limits , if many users call this code at same time:

  ERunActions::touchUrlExt(app()->createAbsoluteUrl('site/someAction'));

so what's your advice ? does it lose action call when workload is too much? i 'v used the gearman for this purpose now ! but if i can use this extension it will be better . thanks for this great extension ,