Title: Release memory while adding posts programatically
Last modified: August 19, 2016

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# Release memory while adding posts programatically

 *  [mattm184](https://wordpress.org/support/users/mattm184/)
 * (@mattm184)
 * [15 years, 6 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/release-memory-while-adding-posts-programatically/)
 * I am trying to add almost 100,000 posts programatically to WP about once a day.
   This is working pretty well, but the process usually crashes with a PHP out of
   memory exception. I think WP is not releasing all the Post objects it creates.
 * Is there a way to force this? Is there a way to unload and reload the entire 
   WP environment periodically to force WP to release all its data structures?
 * I am somewhat new to using WP like this, can anyone think of any other reason
   why this might be a bad idea?
 * Thanks

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

 *  [Xephan](https://wordpress.org/support/users/xephan/)
 * (@xephan)
 * [15 years, 6 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/release-memory-while-adding-posts-programatically/#post-1694163)
 * I’ll recommend you break down that 100,000 process into smaller runs and loop
   through them externally. Not sure how your script is being ran so can’t really
   give a more specific example.
 * Breaking it down would not only get around the memory issue, it’s also less painful
   if something goes wrong and you need to rerun/undo something. Of course, that’s
   assuming you’re somehow checking if the insertions are successful 😀
 *  Thread Starter [mattm184](https://wordpress.org/support/users/mattm184/)
 * (@mattm184)
 * [15 years, 6 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/release-memory-while-adding-posts-programatically/#post-1694247)
 * That is what I am trying to do, but I do not know how to unload the wordpress
   modules.
 * I have a non-WP database. I select * from a table and iterate over all the results.
   Each row gets its own WP post. selecting all and iterating over the entire table
   does no use up too much memory.
 * Forcing an unload of the wp environment would be a really easy way to chunk up
   this task.
 *  [rarwar](https://wordpress.org/support/users/rarwar/)
 * (@rarwar)
 * [14 years, 7 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/release-memory-while-adding-posts-programatically/#post-1694406)
 * This is bit late but here is what worked for me…
 * During the insert process there are a few WordPress variables that get quite 
   bloated, so once you have inserted say, a 1000 posts, you can reset them:
 *     ```
       global $wpdb, $wp_actions;
       $wpdb->queries = array();
       $wp_actions = array();
       wp_cache_flush();
       ```
   
 * These were the main culprits in my case…and releasing them freed a good chunk
   of memory
 * In my case for a bulk insert of 6000~ posts it was originally taking upto 300
   MB, but after releasing the memory after every 1000 inserted posts memory usage
   never went above 50 MB.
 * ps. You can use `var_dump(get_defined_vars());` to have a look at whats taking
   up memory in your case and free variables appropriately.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

The topic ‘Release memory while adding posts programatically’ is closed to new replies.

## Tags

 * [add posts](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/add-posts/)
 * [out of memory](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/out-of-memory/)

 * In: [Hacks](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/plugins-and-hacks/hacks/)
 * 3 replies
 * 3 participants
 * Last reply from: [rarwar](https://wordpress.org/support/users/rarwar/)
 * Last activity: [14 years, 7 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/release-memory-while-adding-posts-programatically/#post-1694406)
 * Status: not resolved

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