Running a php script in the background...

Hi,

I have quite a bit of experience in ASP and have just started on PHP.

I have a script that will take a long time to process, let me call it form2.php

Now i post from form1.php to form2.php.

On form1.php I ask the user to enter his email address and tell him that once the process is complete he will be mailed

Now what i need is that when i post from form1.php to form2.php, the browser should show a message that says processing.. mail will be sent to your address.

In the background the script must do what its supposed to do

In form2.php,I have put the message as plain html on top of the page.Below that i have put the php code. I have used flush(), but it doesnt show the html part till the whole script is finished.

Any idea how to accomplish this??

The keyword tool at digitalpoint runs as a background process, perhaps i can do the same??

Thanks

 

In some of my tools I use the flush() function - it works fine with: server - Apache, PHP as module, clients - Mozilla, NS, Opera, MSIE.

I can think also about few things to consider:
- is this text contained within a table or near the very beginning of the document? some browsers cache the text sent from the server. (then you might pad it with some blanks or comments)
- do you use output buffering or server-side modules like mod_gzip (it will cache te data untill php finishes)

 

Shawn,

I dont need multithreading in the true sense.

All i need is to be a able to make a asynchronous call to a say script2.php from script1.php.

Script1.php posts to itself, calls script2.php asynchronously and shows the user a message that says "ill mail you when im done"

Nothing fancy.

Currently the user is left hanging till the process by script2.php is completed and only then the mail is sent which defeats the purpose.

Would posting to script2.php using sockets be a solution?

er2er: flush() doesnt seem to help, ive tried that out

 

Pardon my ignorance, but like is said im new to php. In asp all i would do was use the xmlhttp in async mode and that would solve my problem.

So is e.g. exec("/usr/local/bin/php /path/to/script.php > /dev/null &"); what you mean by "call your scripts from a shell as a background process"

Also since the script has to be multiplatform, in case the server is a windows server /dev/null wont work will it?

Thanks

 

Can someone supply a bit of example code of how to 'call your scripts from a shell as a background process'. I'm looking to pretty much what Shawn does with the keyword tracker.

PS. Shawn...great forum and thanks for the useful tools!

 

What you mean is essentially Ajax, right? There should be some Ajax libraries available for PHP: here's one, for instance. Another framework I've been hearing good things about is Cake (a Ruby on Rails clone for PHP) which might have Ajax bits you could use.

 

I'm looking into implementing this on a site this weekend. I have been reading up on it and I think I have found my answer, but can someone confirm this for me?

To pass a variable to the file can I use the below code, then use a standard GET in the php file I am calling?

exec ("/usr/bin/php yourscript.php \"id=$whatever\" >/dev/null &");

PHP:

Thanks in advance.

 

oh, I was way off in my reading.... that looks easy enough, thanks a lot Shawn.

 

I am wondering if I were to create a web crawler for a search engine using php/curl could i use this method to run a script on the server that does indexing and in that file use a redirect header to create a continuous loop that continues to index constantly? and if so how would i initially execute it?

 

Ummm...this thread is 3 years old, start a new one

 

Why don't you use AJAX? Its quite simple and solve your problem.