> -----Original Message----- > From: Brad Fuller [mailto:bfuller@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] > Sent: Monday, April 30, 2007 10:55 AM > To: php-general@xxxxxxxxxxxxx > Subject: Run a script apart from request > > Hi all, > > I am developing a program that does some intensive data processing, and is > triggered from a page hit and/or a SOAP request. > > The processing takes on average 30 seconds to 1 minute, which is OK for a > web page (I can use set_time_limit(0) and just display a pseudo-progress bar > animated gif and a "Please wait..." message) but I can't leave the SOAP > request hanging for that long. I need to send a response immediately. > > What I really need to do is acknowledge the client that their request has > been received and will be processed, and terminate that request... and THEN > begin the processing. > > One way I thought of doing it would be to put the requests into the database > and run a cron job every X minutes, but I would like to avoid this if at all > possible. > > Someone had suggested pcntl_fork() but I'm not sure if that will accomplish > what I need it to... if I fork(), then send a response, kill the parent and > let the child run the process, will the HTTP request wait for the child or > will it die with the parent (like I want it to) ? > > Any advice is much appreciated. > > Thx, > > Brad > > -- > PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) > To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php I am not completely familiar with how forking works in PHP applications, but I am fairly familiar with how it works in UNIX. If you kill the parent process, I believe it will close the HTTP request, but since it doesn't handle the SIGCHLD signal after the child is done, the child process will be left as a zombie process. I believe the only way to catch the SIGCHLD is to have the script pcntl_waitpid(), which would then hang the HTTP request. I haven't tested this, but you can easily test it by: $pid = pcntl_fork(); if($pid == -1) { // Something went wrong (handle errors here) } elseif($pid == 0) { // This part is only executed in the child usleep(5000000); //wait 5 seconds... see if the request hangs here } else { die(); } Then wait and see what happens. Maybe there is someone more experience in this area that can put a few words in, but that is what I believe to be the case. -Logan -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
