Question

How could I make sure that the startProcess(); function is being called, but without halting the execution for myFunction(). I’ll guess that there’s a way to call a function and prevent it from returning it’s value to thereby accomplishing this?

Pseudo-code:

function myFunction() {

    startProcess();

    return $something;       
}

function startProcess() {
    sleep(5);
    // Do stuff that user doesn't should have to wait for.
}

Answer 1

You can’t do it. There are some a few functions in PHP that allow async I/O, but nothing like the concurrency you require.

The reason for existing no language support is that PHP is designed to execute short-lived scripts, while the concurrency is managed by the HTTP daemon.

See also:

• cur_mult_init
• pcntl_fork (unix only)
• http://wezfurlong.org/blog/2005/may/guru-multiplexing