Displaying Status During Remote include() or require()

[Shotster]

Issue: I'm pulling content off a remote server using the include() and require() functions, which is then incorporated into the current page.

Problem: There can at time be a significant delay while the remote content if fetched, and all the user sees is a blank page with no indication anything's happening.

Question: What's the best way to display some kind of status message to the user while the data is being retrieved? All I really need is a simple string of text - like "One moment..." to appear instead of a blank page.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

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Steve

[bradgrafelman]

One sugestion would be to send them to a simple HTML/PHP page that has two entities:

1. A meta-http tag (or header() if you're using a PHP file) that sends the user on to the script that lags.

2. Your "One moment please.." message.

If you have a Unix server, you might try output buffering (see [man]ob_start[/man]), as if you have Windows output buffering won't help you much (it does absolutely nothing for me, and the manual states Win32 servers have problems with buffering the data even when it's been told to flush it! stupid stupid Windows!).