WordPress Ajax to Avoid Timeouts

I’ve created my Iron Ajax plugin to help me deal with processing large data sets in WordPress, . This is a tool for developers, it does not provide any value to end-users until additional code is hooked into this plugin.

WordPress Timeouts

When working with large datasets in WordPress, timeouts are often an issue that arises. The solution to avoiding timeouts is to break up the dataset into smaller subsets that can be processed in less than the maximum execution time.

WordPress Ajax to Process Large Datasets

Using Ajax in WordPress to process these smaller subsets through a single click is not a new idea. There are some terrific plugins out there processing large data sets by using Ajax calls to process each of the smaller subsets. Alex Mills (aka ViperBond007) was doing this back in 2008 with his still awesome plugin Regenerate Thumbnails.

Don’t Repeat Yourself

Since I found myself repeatedly creating code to breakup a large dataset and process it all based on Ajax calls, I decided to break out that functionality. This is my WordPress Iron Ajax plugin.

Using the Iron Ajax Plugin

On activation, a menu item is added under Tools > Iron Ajax. On this page, there is a button to start the Ajax processing however each Ajax call doesn’t actually process anything. The functionality of the plugin is created via hooks. On the admin page, you’ll see documentation specific to that instance (you can have multiple instances of the Iron Ajax settings page that do different things). The documentation for that instance includes the hooks to modify the behavior.

Bare Minimum Iron Ajax

At a minimum, you’ll want to modify the initial count that is returned for items that need to be processed and you’ll want to modify the behavior each time an item is processed.

This code should go in an executive locations like: a file in mu-plugins, a new plugin, or the theme’s functions.php.

Create an Additional Instance of Iron Ajax

You can create an additional instance of the Iron Ajax plugin with the following code in your location of choice. I recommend a file in mu-plugins, a new plugin, or the theme’s functions.php.

add_action( 'plugins_loaded', 'create_example_iron_ajax_instance' );
function create_example_iron_ajax_instance() {
    if ( class_exists( 'Fe_Ajx' ) ) {
        new Fe_Ajx( array(
            'instance_id' => 'Example',
        ) );
    }
}

Sal Ferrarello (@salcode)

Sal is a PHP developer with a focus on the WordPress platform. He is a conference speaker with a background including Piano Player, Radio DJ, Magician/Juggler, Beach Photographer, and High School Math Teacher. Sal can be found professionally at WebDevStudios, where he works as a senior backend engineer.