Posted by somaboy mx on 12/21/05 12:59

"Susan Baker" <sbaker@no.spam.net> wrote ...
> Is it possible to "push" data from a server to a client, using PHP server
> side scripting?. An example script will be very useful.

If I understand you correctly you need a type of server app that a chat or
messaging client can connect to on a specific port, and once the connection
is established your server needs to be able to pump data down the pipe
without client requests (ie. passive client). Usually these kind of apps are
separate processes that run continuously on a web server, often written in
Java, Python etc. PHP scripts normally run once upon request, output
something and exit. But you could write a PHP script that executes
continually in an endless loop and have it act as a socket server, as
demonstrated in this tutorial:
http://www.zend.com/pecl/tutorials/sockets.php This is more of a hack than a
solution though.

The client can't be a regular web browser as it can only receive data on
request, but you can use the Flash player, because it has an XML socket API.

..soma

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