Heavy Script too slow / Distant Activation ?

[Gargouil]

Hi all,

I am trying to build a kind of mailing list and i have some basic questions.
Suppose i have a list off 500 email in a database...

Each time a user use a page to submit a new product or something else... the goal is to send a message to all 500 to inform them of the new "product". I have a good idea on how this will work, i understand the mail function, that not my problem.

I want to know he i can call a (eventually loud and slow script cause by the lot of name to email) script outside the page where he was called. This meen that after my user submitted his product, then a form was sent, the page reload.. a script in the header is caller (the mailing script).
Here is my problem... how can i minimise execution time ? it is possible to simply call a script and don't wait that he finish before load the rest of the page ?

I hope this is not to confused

[galena]

You would need to spawn a different process or thread. I'm not sure if you can do this in PHP. Maybe PEAR provides something.

As a workaround, you can probably run the script from a system(...) call, and use a php4.cgi:

system("php4.cgi script.php > /dev/null 2>&1 &");

or you could use wget

system("wget -O - http://yourserver.com/script.php > /dev/null 2>&1 &");

You have to redirect the output to leave it running in the background and return immediately. the '2>&1' ensures that both stdout and stderr are redirected. The last '&' ensures the command is trunning in the background (but might not be necessary)

HTH, Michiel.