echo something while working in background

I was wondering how can I do this:

add something to a database
echo a dot
add something else
echo another dot

.. but this in real time, not doing all and echo the dots after. I tried with a sleep() but doesn`t do what I need.

Any ideas?

 

If you ran it from a command line then it'd work with echo, otherwise you'll probably want to look into something like Ajax, I'm not sure - is there any reason why you want to do this?

 

use ob_flush();

http://ca3.php.net/ob_flush

// do your database insert
echo ".";
ob_flush();

// do another insert
echo ".";
ob_flush();

PHP:

 

in pure php, you would have refresh the full page when you print a dot... the only way to do this would be by using ajax/javascript...

 

Use the function

ob_implicit_flush(true);

PHP:

on the start of your script.

Note, though, that some browsers (IE, for example) require some amount of html received to start displaying.

 

Oh cool! I haven't used that one before! nice