Posted by Jasper Bryant-Greene on 10/21/05 04:28

On Thu, 2005-10-20 at 15:07 -0700, Surya Mishra wrote:
> I have to start a task on the server side that is going to take pretty long
> to process in the server side. So I would like to show a message to the user
> and ask him/her to check again later. But starting a new task holds up the
> thread and won't let me exit the php. The user's browser does keeps showing
> busy.
> I tried to create a new thread using pcntl_fork, but my php doesn't allow
> that as it has not been compiled with pcntl support and its not possible to
> change that.
> I also tried to create a script that would do the task and called the script
> using system command and passed an '&' at the end to make it process in
> background, but that also keeps the main thread busy.

Add it to a list (flat file, DB, whatever) of processes to be done and
run a cron script regularly (how regular would depend on the specific
app) to execute all the processes in the list.

--
Jasper Bryant-Greene
General Manager
Album Limited

e: jasper@album.co.nz
w: http://www.album.co.nz/
p: 0800 4 ALBUM (0800 425 286) or +64 21 232 3303
a: PO Box 579, Christchurch 8015, New Zealand

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