Question

I have an HTML form that submits to a PHP page which initiates a script. The script can take anywhere from 3 seconds to 30 seconds to run – the user doesn’t need to be around for this script to complete.

Is it possible to initiate a PHP script, immediately print ‘Thanks’ to the user (or whatever) and let them go on their merry way while your script continues to work?

In my particular case, I am sending form-data to a php script that then posts the data to numerous other locations. Waiting for all of the posts to succeed is not in my interest at the moment. I would just like to let the script run, allow the user to go and do whatever else they like, and that’s it.

Answer 1

I ended up with the following.

<?php    // Ignore User-Requests to Abort   ignore_user_abort(true);   // Maximum Execution Time In Seconds   set_time_limit(30);    header('Content-Length: 0');   flush();    /*      Loooooooong process    */  ?>