Does this block the rendering of my page?

Question

At the beginning of the PHP that generates all the pages of my site is like

log_visitor_info(
    $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'],
    $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'],
    $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'],
    $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT']
);

which calls the function

function log_visitor_info ( $ip, $pgurl, $refurl, $aginfo )
{
    global $wpdb, $ipsToIgnore; 
    if (!in_array($ip, $ipsToIgnore)) {
        $wpdb->insert('wp_nas_visits',  array(
            'ip'=>$ip,
            'refurl'=>$refurl,
            'pgurl'=>$pgurl,
            'aginfo'=>$aginfo
        ));
    }
}

where the $wpdb->insert is inserting something to the database. Because I don't need any of this info anywhere else in the page, I would prefer if it were possible to execute log_visitor_info asynchronously or "in the background", if you will. I think it's slowing down my page loads. Is there some way that I can put log_visitor_info on my server's queue that executes separately (if such a thing even exists ...) ? I have Windows Server 2012.

Possible duplicate of [php execute a background process](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/45953/php-execute-a-background-process) — showdev, Nov 18 '15 at 22:24
If not, look into an Ajax call on page load that will handle the logging — Rob G, Nov 18 '15 at 22:39
@RobGudgeon Yes, I can get this from server logs, but I have to write a script to parse the info out of them. Plus, this is for a website I want to be able to repackage with a custom analytics feature. — , Nov 18 '15 at 22:42
And yes, AJAX is a good idea, but can't I directly access the same vein of processing that an AJAX call would??? — , Nov 18 '15 at 22:43
You could put it at the bottom of each page, for a quick win. Call flush() first to reduce blocking. Or you could fire something using exec() and tell it to redirect output so it doesn't cause the script to hang. — Rob G, Nov 18 '15 at 22:56
A parsing script wouldn't take much effort. I run done that aren't even code, just grep, sed, awk & pipes/redirects — Rob G, Nov 18 '15 at 22:57

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 18 '15 at 22:54

Not tested and I'm not a WordPress guy or fan, but should be adaptable if you want to use AJAX. First, create a PHP page (logger.php) and add the following:

//include files needed to instantiate $wpdb

$ipsToIgnore  = unserialize($argv[1]);
$dataToInsert = unserialize($argv[2]);

if (!in_array($dataToInsert['ip'], $ipsToIgnore)) $wpdb->insert('wp_nas_visits', $dataToInsert);

Second, in the beginning of the PHP that generates all the pages of your site replace your function and function call with:

$ips  = escapeshellarg(serialize($ipsToIgnore));
$args = escapeshellarg(serialize(array('ip'     => $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'],
                                       'pgurl'  => $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'],
                                       'refurl' => $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'],
                                       'aginfo' => $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'])));

pclose(popen("start /B /path/to/php.exe /path/to/logger.php $ips $args", "r"));

You may need to escapeshellarg() the path to php.exe and the path to logger.php as well, especially if they have spaces in them.

See, but that's not something that can be included in a WordPress theme that can install itself. — , Nov 19 '15 at 00:05

Does this block the rendering of my page?

1 Answers1