Correct approach to import data into mysql from large csv. (rows > 100k)

http://php.net/manual/en/language.generators.overview.php

Calling range(0, 1000000) will result in well over 100 MB of memory being used.

As an alternative, we can implement an xrange() generator, which will only ever need enough memory to create an Iterator object and track the current state of the generator internally, which turns out to be less than 1 kilobyte.

http://mark-story.com/posts/view/php-generators-a-useful-example

http://www.sebastianviereck.de/en/ver-abreiten-large-files-with-php-using-generator/

Hope this examples will help you, short answer is: use generators!

// This example I think is fine!
<?php
class CsvFile {

    protected $file;

    public function __construct($file) {
        $this->file = fopen($file, 'r');
    }

    public function parse() {
        while (!feof($this->file)) {
            yield fgetcsv($this->file);
        }
        return;
    }
}

$csv = new CsvFile('/pathTo/file.csv');
foreach ($csv->parse() as $row) {
    echo $row;
    // INSERT INTO DATABASE 
}

I generally will write these are commands.

That beings said, I also manually run these commands. I have never had much of a reason to allow a user to import that many records to the system.

BUT if that is required, you could also enable queues and workers, and register the import as a job.

I have never had an issue with these two concepts timing out. You are dealing with a long running process, which should probably be done fully on the server side, nginx should not be awaiting a result.

@cmdobueno Thanks for your suggestion. I am looking at Laravel Horizon. Do you think that would be the right fit for the task?

Ummmm sure I guess?

I suggest reading:

https://laravel.com/docs/5.7/queues

before going down any path. Laravel queues are literally built into laravel. All you need to do is install something like supervisor to run them all the time...

though, like I said read the docs and pick which ever solution you feel works best for you. I generally do not use outside services, be it free or paid, when I can accomplish the same thing from within my own server.