Worker Pool design pattern with PHP

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In this article I will show you how to use the Worker Pool design pattern with PHP.

In the first part I will use the Pool and the Threaded classes to demonstrate parallel processing. They are both part of the pthreads object-oriented API and require the ZTS option to be enabled in your PHP version (https://www.php.net/manual/en/class.thread.php).

Worker Pool is a design pattern that involves creating a pool of worker threads or processes and assigning tasks to them for parallel execution. This pattern provides a solution for managing concurrent execution and controlling the number of simultaneous tasks being processed.

The benefits of using the Worker Pool pattern include:

1. Efficient resource utilization: By limiting the number of concurrent processes using a pool, the code can control and optimize resource utilization, preventing an excessive number of processes from overwhelming the system.
2. Improved performance: Parallel execution of tasks using multiple worker processes can significantly improve the performance of the overall system by utilizing the available resources effectively.
3. Simplified task assignment: The worker pool abstracts away the complexities of managing individual worker processes. The main process can simply assign tasks to the pool, and…