PHP 8.5 Introduces curl_multi_get_handles: Simplifying Multi-cURL Management

A new helper in PHP 8.5 called curl_multi_get_handles makes it easy to see all of the individual requests you’ve added to a multi-cURL session in one go. Instead of keeping track of each handle yourself, you simply ask PHP to give you the full list. Below, we’ll walk through why this matters, how it works, and then show you a beginner-friendly example fetching three different API endpoints at once.

🤔 What Is cURL and Why Use “Multi” Mode?

• cURL is PHP’s built-in tool for talking to other websites or APIs.
• Normally, you open one “handle” (curl_init) per request.
• When you need to fetch from several URLs at the same time (for speed), you use a multi handle (curl_multi_init), which bundles multiple requests together and runs them in parallel.

🆕 What curl_multi_get_handles Does

Before PHP 8.5, if you added three handles to your multi handle, you’d have to remember each one yourself if you ever wanted to inspect or loop through them. Now, you call:

$allHandles = curl_multi_get_handles($multiHandle);

and PHP hands you back an array of every handle currently in that multi handle.

🛠 Beginner-Friendly Example

Let’s say you want to grab the current weather for three cities in one go:

// 1. Create the multi handle
$multiHandle = curl_multi_init();

// 2. Prepare three individual cURL handles
$chNY  = curl_init('https://api.example.com/weather?city=NewYork');
$chLDN = curl_init('https://api.example.com/weather?city=London');
$chTKY = curl_init('https://api.example.com/weather?city=Tokyo');

// 3. Add them to the multi handle
curl_multi_add_handle($multiHandle, $chNY);
curl_multi_add_handle($multiHandle, $chLDN);
curl_multi_add_handle($multiHandle, $chTKY);

// 4. Run them simultaneously
$running = null;
do {
    curl_multi_exec($multiHandle, $running);
    curl_multi_select($multiHandle);
} while ($running > 0);

// 5. Now use the new function to get your handles back
$handles = curl_multi_get_handles($multiHandle);

// 6. Loop through each to collect the results
foreach ($handles as $ch) {
    $response = curl_multi_getcontent($ch);
    echo "Response for handle " . spl_object_hash($ch) . ": $response\n";
    curl_multi_remove_handle($multiHandle, $ch);
}

// 7. Clean up
curl_multi_close($multiHandle);

What’s happening here?

1. We start a multi handle.
2. We set up three separate city-weather requests.
3. We add each one to the multi handle.
4. We run them all together.
5. We call curl_multi_get_handles, which returns all three handles in an array.
6. We loop over that array to pull out each response and then remove the handle.
7. Finally, we close the multi handle.

👍 Why This Helps Beginners

• No manual bookkeeping: You don’t need your own list or array of handles—PHP gives it to you.
• Cleaner code: Fewer variables to manage, so your script is easier to read.
• Better debugging: You can quickly inspect every handle that’s in flight without searching through your own data structures.

🚀 Wrapping Up

With PHP 8.5’s curl_multi_get_handles, managing lots of simultaneous HTTP requests becomes almost effortless. For simple projects or big ones, you’ll spend less time juggling handles and more time building the features you care about.

Happy coding!