I have a curl script which reads the data from a remote source. Below is the current code:

```
function download_page($path){
    $ch = curl_init();
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL,$path);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FAILONERROR,1);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION,1);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER,1);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, 15);
    $retValue = curl_exec($ch);                      
    curl_close($ch);
    return $retValue;
}
$sXML = download_page('http://remotepage.php&function=getItems&count=100&page=1');
$oXML = new SimpleXMLElement($sXML);
foreach($oXML->results->item->item as $oEntry){
    $insert_query = mysql_query("INSERT INTO tbl_item (first_name, last_name, date_added) VALUES ('" . $oEntry->firstname . "', '" . $oEntry->lastname . "', '" . date("Y-m-d H:i:s") . "')");
}

```

The script works however is extremely slow to insert as I imagine its because its writing each individual record. The count variable is how many records returned for each page and the page variable is a simple page counter.

I am wondering if there is a way to do a bulk insert statement to insert all 100 records at once.

Thanks in advance.