Running a Script in the background??

[magic8ball]

I run my PHP scripts in a SAMP (Solaris/Apache/Mysql/PHP) environment and I have a few functions within the main submit processing form that call a server that takes a while to respond. I wanted to know if there is any way to create a background process so that once the command is issued, it will continue and the user will at least see the results page.

Otherwise, the way things work now, the user hits submit, and they watch the browser churn and frequently the re-fresh the screen (which results in multiple submits) instead of waiting.

Thanks,

:wq!magic8ball

[bradgrafelman]

A simple example of one method (assuming *nix-like OS):

exec("/usr/bin/php /home/brad/myscript.php > /dev/null 2>&1 &");

That would create a new 'php' process and fork it into the background (also redirecting the output) so that your current script doesn't wait for it to finish executing.

[johanafm]

and you might want to prevent subsequent submits

<input type="submit" onclick="this.disabled=true;"/>

Or use the form's onsubmit event handler to do the same thing.