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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-07T18:14:11+00:00

I am wanting to execute a large, database intensive script, but do not need

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I am wanting to execute a large, database intensive script, but do not need to wait for the process to finish. I would simply like to call the script, let it run in the background and then redirect to another page.

EDIT:
i am working on a local Zend community server, on Windows 7.
I have access to remote linux servers where the project also resides, so i can do this on linux or windows.

i have this

public function createInstanceAction()
{
    //calls a seperate php process which creates the instance
    exec('php -f /path/to/file/createInstance.php');


    Mage::getSingleton('adminhtml/session')->addSuccess(Mage::helper('adminhtml')->__('Instance creation process started. This may take up to a few minutes.'));
    $this->_redirect('instances/adminhtml_instances/');
    return;
}

this works perfectly, but the magento application hangs around for the process to finish. it does everything i expect, logging to file from time to time, and am happy with how its running. Now all i would like to do is have this script start, the controller action does not hang around, but instead redirects and thats that. from what I have learnt about exec(), you can do so by changing the way i call exec() above, to :

exec('php -f /path/to/file/createInstance.php > /dev/null 2>&1 &');

which i took from here

if i add “> /dev/null 2>&1 &” to the exec call, it doesnt wait around as expected, but it does not execute the script anymore. Could someone tell me why, and if so, tell me how i can get this to work please?

Could this be a permission related issue?

thanks

EDIT : Im assuming it would be an issue to have any output logged to file if i call the exec function with (/dev/null 2>&1 &) as that would cancel that. is that correct?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    PHP popen

    From the docs (this should help you do other stuff, while that process is working; not sure if closing the current PHP process will kill the opened process):

    /* Add redirection so we can get stderr. */
$handle = popen('/path/to/executable 2>&1', 'r');
echo "'$handle'; " . gettype($handle) . "\n";
$read = fread($handle, 2096);
echo $read;
pclose($handle);

    Solution 2:
    Trick the browser to close the connection (assuming there is a browser involved):

    ob_start();
?><html><!--example html body--></html><?php
$strContents=ob_get_clean(); 

header("Connection: Close");
header("Content-encoding: none");//doesn't work without this, I don't know why:(

ignore_user_abort(true);

header("Content-type: text/html");
header("Content-Length: ".strlen($strContents));
echo $strContents;

flush();
//at this point a real browser would close the connection and finish rendering; 
//crappy http clients like some curl implementations (and not only) would wait for the server to close the connection, then finish rendering/serving results...:(

//TODO: add long running operations here, exec, or whatever you have.
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