handling long requests ajax to php - php

Question

I have a web application I'm working on where the user clicks a button to initiate an ajax request to a php file. The php file takes a very long time to run which forces the user to wait until the php files has finished running before notifying the user the request has been completed.
Here is a sample of the code I'm using:
jQuery caller:
$('#button').click(function(){
$.ajax({
type: "POST",
url: 'index-process.php',
success: function (data) {
console.log(data);
alert('finished');
}
});
});
index-process.php
<?php
/// placeholder for a long script
sleep(60);
echo "finished processing";
?>
I'm looking for some kind of work around that will allow me to notify the user that the request was submitted. Then allow the code to finish running in the background. I don't necessarily need my php script to return any values to the user. It just needs to execute.
So far I've tried something like this using a curl request with 2 different php files, but it still forces the user to wait until both php files have finished running before finishing the ajax request:
index-process.php
<?php
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, 'index-process2.php');
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_WRITEFUNCTION, 'do_nothing');
curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
echo "finished processing";
function do_nothing($curl, $input) {
return 0; // aborts transfer with an error
}
?>
index-process2.php
<?php
ob_end_clean();
ignore_user_abort(true);
ob_start();
header("Connection: close");
header("Content-Length: " . ob_get_length());
ob_end_flush();
flush();
/// placeholder for a long script
sleep(60);
?>
If there isn't a good solution using php is there a possible solution using jQuery? If so, could somebody show me the proper way of coding this?

Answer 1

fsockopen is the best answer I could come up on this one. Hope this helps somebody down the road. The following code allows me to call file1.php via ajax which will send data to file2.php. Once file1.php sends data to file2.php using fsockopen it does not wait for a response. Additional code can be run in file1.php while file2.php is doing it's thing. File1.php can echo a response to the ajax request right away even while file2.php is still running.
This answer is only useful for someone who needs to run a long executing script that requires data in but no data back in return.
file1.php called via ajax request:
$vars = array('hello' => 'world');
$post_data = http_build_query($vars);
/// ssl and 443 are used for https, change to tls and 80 for http
/// only the main website domain is needed
/// do not put the full path to the file you need to call here
$fp = fsockopen("ssl://www.main-website-domain.com", 443, $errno, $errstr, 1);
if (!$fp) {
echo "$errstr ($errno)<br />\n";
} else {
//// this is where the full path to the file you want to reach goes
//// format is (method) (path not including the domain) (HTTP version)
$out = "POST /Full/Path/to-test-file2.php HTTP/1.1\r\n";
$out .= "Host: www.main-website-domain.com\r\n";
$out .= "Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded\r\n";
$out .= "Content-length: " . strlen($post_data) . "\r\n";
$out .= "User-Agent: What-ever-you-want\r\n";
$out .= "Connection: close\r\n\r\n";
$out .= $post_data . "\r\n\r\n";
fwrite($fp, $out);
fclose($fp);
}
file2.php
$data = $_POST['hello'];
ignore_user_abort(true);
sleep(60);///example of a long running script
// since no data will be returned it's best to store any results in a database
// echo, print_r, var_dump, or any other display mechanism will not work in this file unless directly accessed

Answer 2

For people who use php-fpm (meaning, nginx or apache via mod_fcgi), you can use fastcgi_finish_request to achieve described behavior.
What it does
fastcgi_finish_request will send the output to the client (browser) but it'll execute all code specified after the function.
Example
echo "Request accepted";
fastcgi_finish_request(); // Sends "Request accepted" back to web server, but executed all code below
// Do your long running task
sleep(60);