How do you run a long PHP script and keep sending updates to the browser via HTTP?
Something to do with output buffering but I don’t know exactly how.
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How do you run a long PHP script and keep sending updates to the browser via HTTP?
Something to do with output buffering but I don’t know exactly how.
Output Buffering is thinking in the right direction, you start output buffering with
ob_start()just like you would with sessions (session_start) somewhere in the top of your script, before any output is sent.Then, you can use
ob_flushandflushto keep flushing the output. For example, if you are in aforeachloop and at the end of each loop you want to output the new row and wait 1 second you would can do that.But also look at
set_time_limit, because otherwise people might experience a timeout after 30 seconds or so.Another quick note, some browsers require a minimum number of bytes of output before they actually start showing it. I’m not sure what amound of bytes it was, I think it was around the 4000. Also, some browsers won’t render certain elements (like tables) until they are closed. So flushing won’t work there either.