Re: Forking and BG processes in PHP

Hi There are [messy] ways of doing it like this, but I find the tidiest approach is to add an entry to a queue table in the database and have a background process running every minute or so that checks the queue and runs any new jobs. This keeps the web interface [very] nippy and lets jobs of any size get done btw- you'll probs find it useful to limit it to one background job at a time. -- Shane On Tuesday 06 November 2001 10:15 am, Massimiliano Bariola wrote: > Hi everybody, > > I wasn't able to find a good answer in the archives, so I thought I > would ask here. > > This is the scenario: An user can request a time-expensive DB > processing via a PHP page. I'd like to arrange for having a > confirmation page telling the user that the request is being > processed, and then redirecting him/doing whatever else/etc. > Meanwhile, there should be a process actually doing the DB work. > When it's finished, it should send a mail to the requester including > an URL for the download of the results of the operation. > > Problem is, is there a way to make PHP start a background process > which is independent from the spawning page time-line? > > the closest I've seen to this is the use of > register/unregister_tick_function but it isn't clear from > documentation as to whether the main flow of execution is suspended at > the time of execution of the tick_function (i.e. working like a > GOTO/GOSUB) or it's actually spawning a new process with a different > timeline (thus allowing the main page to finish without killing the > tick_function as well) > > Or... do I need to forget about it and call bash scripts? > > thanks for your answers, > > Max