TCP/Sockets in php, holds up my thread?

I need to have my PHP application (its a stand alone, not web-based) connect to a server, and also host a tcp socket for things to connect to it.. but since php isnt multi-threaded, i cant have the server listen on one socket, and host another at the same time! it all has to be in one file. is it poss开发者_运维问答ible to run both of these side by side?

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As an alternative to konforce's answer, use socket_select() to listen to both sockets at once. It will tell you which sockets are able to be read/written when it returns. As pdb and konforce both rightly pointed out, you'll need to put the socket in non-blocking mode with socket_set_nonblock(). Once socket_select() tells you that a socket is ready, write or read as much as possible for each ready socket, then call socket_select() again.

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You will need both, socket_select AND non-blocking sockets.

For example socket_select tells you that the socket is writable but doesn't tell you how much bytes you can send without blocking.

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Use non blocking sockets. See socket_set_nonblock() and related functions.