Closing connection to client

[Onetoomanysodas]

I am developing some AJAX apps and I need to close the socket connection with the client so the browser will execute the server response without waiting for the script to complete it's execution.

Here's what I want:

<?php
$bar = $_POST['foo'];
echo "alert('You said '".$bar."')";

/* this is where I would close the connection with client so browser evaluates server response */

someFunctionThatTakesALongTime();
?>

Any help would be most appreciated.

[NogDog]

I am not aware of a way to do that in PHP (which of course leaves open the possibility that there is a way). I might try, instead, to put whatever needs to be done in someFunctionThatTakesALongTime() into a separate script, then call that script via shell_exec(), specifying to launch it as a background process.