Possible to launch a second php script in the background?

darkus

I have a php script that process some information from HTTP_GET when you land on it, and it works just fine. But I would also like to pass this data to a second script, without pushing the user to a second script.

Is this at all possible ?

The only solution I could think of was to have the php script open an html connection on the server to the second script and pass the variables there then quickly close the html connection and this would make a seamless visit for the user (all done in background on the server side). But this seems like a difficult solution, there must be a better one?

Thanks!

konrad

If the second script doesn't produce any output, you can just include() it in the first script. All variables defined in the first script would be available in included one.

darkus

konrad wrote:
If the second script doesn't produce any output, you can just include() it in the first script. All variables defined in the first script would be available in included one.

True, but the second script is on an entirely different server. And the second script produces a word file on that second server so it has to be run on that server. Any ideas, im really mentally stuck here..

Installer

konrad's solution seems like the best one, but you could also do this:

$get_var = $_GET['var'];
ob_start();
include('http://example.com/script.php?var=' . $get_var);
ob_end_clean();

darkus

Installer wrote:
konrad's solution seems like the best one, but you could also do this:
$get_var = $_GET['var'];
ob_start();
include('http://example.com/script.php?var=' . $get_var);
ob_end_clean();

Yea it would work, but the problem is the example.com/script.php script outputs a word file that sits on the second server, that wouldnt work if I ran it as an include off the first server right?

Installer

What do you mean by "output"? If you mean it outputs to a file, yes, it would work. If you mean it outputs html that you don't want displayed, yes, it would work.

darkus

Installer wrote:
What do you mean by "output"? If you mean it outputs to a file, yes, it would work. If you mean it outputs html that you don't want displayed, yes, it would work.

Hmm, ok let me try to explain myself better

http://server1.com/ex.php is where the user is browsing

http://server2.com/ex.php is where a script that outputs a word file that will reside on server2.com

the user's browser will never touch server2.com basicly. He will surf into server1.com/ex.php and I want server1.com/ex.php to give some info to server2.com/ex.php, which will in turn out put data to server2.com/word.txt

I will try the include method, but i assume it wouldnt work because its not running the script from server2.com in that method, ok well, havent tried it so let me try it first lol

darkus

Tried the include method, didnt work actually 🙁

Installer

This script on the 1st server:

$get_var = 'test'; 
ob_start(); 
include('http://example.com/script.php?var=' . $get_var); 
ob_end_clean(); 
echo 'Output from 1st server.' . '<br />';

and this script on the 2nd server

$fp = fopen('./test.txt');
fwrite($fp, $_GET['var']);
fclose($fp);
echo 'Output from 2nd server.';

will display, to the user on the 1st server, this:

Output from 1st server.

and will write this to the file on the 2nd server:

test

darkus

Ok it does work!!

I LOVE YOU MAN !!! 🙂 🙂 🙂

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Installer

I love you, too.

darkus

Followup question:

Some of my variables have spaces in them, those variables seem to choke up this whole method (nothing gets transmitted at all, infact that script isnt even called via the include).

It works fine with variables that have no spaces, but as soon as I introduce one space, there are problems. Anyone have ideas on this ?

Thanks!!

Weedpacket

Spaces and some other characters need to be encoded in URLs, via [man]urlencode[/man]. Otherwise the URL would be broken.