Construcing a "Please wait a moment" page

Davidc316

Hi,

I have a PHP script that executes lots (literally thousands) of MySQL queries. The page then displays some information based on the results of the MySQL search. I estimate that it will take MySQL at least ten seconds to do all of its work when my script is executed.

Instead of having the user looking at a blank screen while the MySQL queries are being executed, I would like the user to have a nice looking display that says (something like) "Your search is being carried out, please wait a few moments". Furthermore, when the MySQL searches are eventually over, I would like the user to be diverted to a results page.

I am having trouble doing this because header redirects won't work if something has already been printed onto the screen.

Can anyone offer any help with this matter?

anm

The only other way I know of is a meta tag that lets you input the amount of seconds before it redirects to a results page

<meta 
http-equiv="refresh" content="5;url=results.php" />

Something like that. The number before the URL is the seconds I believe. . .

rpanning

I've never done this but thought about it.

In your PHP script, output the meta refresh tag set at 1 sec and HTML saying "wait" or whatever. Then at the end start your mySQL queries. Make sure to set a long timeout for your script.

What I'd expect to happen is the meta refresh and HTML should be outputed to the client for them to view. But, the script would continue to run queries, keeping the connection open (to the client). When the queries are done the connection is closed and the meta refresh is activated refreshing the page.

Again, I havn't tested this and I'm not sure if it'll work. But it was a thought. Also, maybe check to see how vBulletin does it.

Davidc316

Thanks for the replies.

I fear that both offerings would not work because refreshing the page or diverting elsewhere would cause me to lose all MySQL results.

The funny thing is, as one of you mentioned, this very forum does exactly what I'm hoping to achieve.

anm

IPB does it also. . .perhaps if you have the code for a previous (i.e. free) version you could look at that. . .if meta refresh doesn't work I'm stumped for what would. Maybe some type of javascript?

Roger_Ramjet

If you used an iframe in a wrapper page you could send a message to the client immediately in the outer page and the results would be the contents page of the iframe.

I have a page that displays account data with user notes. The user notes can be many and long so a scrollable iframe means that the main data does not disappear when you view tha notes. Main data displays immediately but the notes can take a second or ten to be formatted and sent.

liquorvicar

The way I've done it in the past is to display the menu/page navigation with a message saying 'Please wait' at the top of the page, then using a flush() command to display this.
I then do the MySQL processing and once this is finished, display and 'Finished message' next to the 'Please wait message' and then continue on to display the result...

Andy

Pests

I'm pretty sure these forums does its search and then stores the result in the database (ie: search ID to relate the user to the query and a serialzed array for the returned results). Then it redirects the user to another page which retrives this data and displays it.

Davidc316

I think what you've said would definately work, Pests! Cheers

Thanks for the responses folks.