Redirect Browser, but continue to run PHP program

Phantazm

Hopefully this is a semi-intelligent question, since I've been trying and searching for the past few hours. As always, I'm sure it's quite simple, if you know how.. 😉

To make a long story short, I've got a page that allows a user to submit an image via http upload (JPEG usually). I then take that image, resize it (twice.. once for a gallery and once for a thumbnail), and then redirect the browser back to the main site (via "header("Location: http://server.url.com");").

At any rate, anyone who uses the ImageCopyResampleBicubic function knows, it's very nice and VERY slow.

I would like to allow the user to preform the upload, and then begin processing the image in the background (so to speak). The user needs to be redirected to the main site BEFORE the processing takes place, so he/she does not have to wait for the resamplings to be completed.

I've thought of simply placing the images in a queue and batch processing them at a later time, though I would like to avoid this, if at all possible (which I'm sure it is).

As always, I've searched, and searched some more, to no avail. Any ideas / suggestions from you fellow gurus?

Thanx in advance!

MarkB423

I wonder what happens if you do not have "exit" after the header function... for instance:

instead of:

header('Location: url.php');
exit;

just have:

header('Location: url.php');

What you could do is use a little JavaScript... write a script that redirects to a confirmation page, which in turn opens one of those "pop-up" windows. Except, have this pop-up come up minimized and very small. If you choose, you could notify the user that they should not close the newly-opened window.

Anyway, the page that is opened by the pop-up window should be passed an argument or whatever for the temporary location of the file, and then after all the processing is completed, print a line or two of javascript that closes the window. Make sense?

Phantazm

Makes perfect sense. I've tried option #1... no exit after the redirect. The browser still waits until the script is complete before loading the site.

Option #2, or a slight variation thereof, may be what I end up using. Not exactly what I had in mind, but it'll certainly do the trick.

And...

now that I think of it.. hmm... the script DOES continue to run even if the browser window IS closed, so perhaps the way to do this is to do as you suggest, but IMMEDIATELY close the new pop-up window (just get it to start the script, then close).

Hmm.... interesting ideas brewing here.

Thanks for the suggestions / input MarkB423! Greatly appreciated!

MarkB423

No problem... whatever method you decide to use, I'd appreciate it if you updated me on how you handled the situation =)