Big DB query and waiting user...

WzL

Hi,

I tried to find reasonable solution how to do this "please wait while searching" notice to user who has to wait about 5-10 seconds for results. And i didn't find good solution for this.

My db is quite big and sometimes it takes 5-10 sends to get results. What i want to do is display just a Please Wait while PHP script is generating output.

I tried different output buffering things, all what i got was whole page AFTER 10 seconds with this Please wait string :mad:

So, how do i first output line and then do this search and then again output results? I know that one method is to popup different page with this text and refresh it in 1-2 seconds with checking if other is done. But i am not going to use this idea.

superwormy

I would be curious as to how to do this as well... no idea at the moment...

The only thing I can think of would be to have teh job running in the background... for instance, maybe use shell(wget http://www.example.com/script_which_takes_forever.php) and insure that it'll never take more than 10 seconds to run, have wget save the result file somewhere, then open it up and print it out on the next page...

Not sure if that made sense...

iceraider

Why not use something like...

In your html code.. I see your trouble hmm..

superwormy

That won't actually get teh result in the background though...

iceraider

While its on that page waiting for ten seconds save it to a file, the sql results, then load that file on next page.

Theres a solution 😛

WzL

Sounds good, BUT, not all searches take that 10 seconds. And some may take more. If i use this refresh method it takes always 10 seconds and results are not ready if db search takes more than 10 seconds.

More ideas?

iceraider

On page say something like

.. Searching Please Wait ...

then get results into the text file, then print

.. Click here tp view results ...

WzL

Again, sounds good. But then, how do i print that "click here to view results" AFTER that query is done? And if I can print it AFTER that, why wouldn't I print out results then?

Why on earth this is so difficult, i have seen these in action, someone can do it, been there clicked that! 😃

WzL

Ok, one guy told me to do it like this:

Header("Connection: keep-alive");
Then we print Please Wait-text.
After that flush().
And then data.

I tried this out. Didnt work. It takes that 5-10 secs to process data and then it spits out everything (please wait + result).

Is this even right direction for making this to work?-)

[deleted]

When moving to a new location, most browsers keep the current page on-screen until they start receiving new data.

You could try using an intermediate page that just says 'please wait' and then immediately redirects t the script that does the actual search.

This search script then does the search and produces no output until the search is complete. Then it prints all the data and the browser begins to display it.

Another option is to open a javascript popup in a named-window, do the search (which happens in the background behind the popup) and at the end of the data print a javascript function that closes the popup-window.

But ofcourse the best solution is to just speed-up the database.

WzL

Finally it works.

Somehow it didn't work without output buffering, but here is how i did it:

if (@$page=="pleasewait")
{
ob_start();
print "<HTML><HEAD><META HTTP-EQUIV='Refresh' CONTENT='1;URL=search.php?page=search&kentta=$kentta&haku=$haku'></HEAD><BODY>";

print "Please wait while searching......<br>";
ob_end_flush();
}

if (@$page=='search')
{
ob_start();

OpenDB();
if ($kentta==1) { $hakuk="valmistaja"; }
if ($kentta==2) { $hakuk="tuotenimike"; }

$SQL="SELECT * FROM hinnasto where $hakuk LIKE '%$haku%'";

$yhteys=mysql_query($SQL);
while ($stuffi=mysql_fetch_row($yhteys))
{
print "ouput....";
}
mysql_close();
ob_end_flush();
}

and below is form which calls this page with search.php?page=pleasewait&haku=something&kentta=1

.. I hope that someone has some use of this =)

mystrymaster

Layers are your solution here .

google it and you'll find a script for it

WzL

Actually i Googled a lot but didn't find suitable solution. I didnt try keyword layer. I have understood that layers won't work ok with all browsers. Am i right?

mystrymaster

more then likely if you find a prebuilt solution you will find a cross browser one

also try searching in phpbb forums