I just found this post, it is old, but polling concept gives troubles for a lot of poeple. So i'll put an implementation example here. But before giving it to you, I should give you an advice that made me mad some time ago :
When you poll, you should take care of sessions behaviour (race conditions). To make it simple : if you open a session, the session file is locked until the session is closed to avoid 2 theads writting different data into it. So, if you need a session to check if a user is logged or so, always close the session before polling.
My demo gives you an example of a polling implementation in PHP. I will not use a database, but a file instead. When you click polling button, you will enter the loop and until the file is modified, you will stay polling. When you fill the form and click Release, what you typed will be saved into the file. Modification time of the file will change so the polling will stop.
Tip: use a tool like Firebug to see what's happen.
Now lets speak in a better langage than my english :
<?php
// For this demo
if (file_exists('poll.txt') == false) {
file_put_contents('poll.txt', '');
}
if (isset($_GET['poll'])) {
// Don't forget to change the default time limit
set_time_limit(120);
date_default_timezone_set('Europe/Paris');
$time = time();
// We loop until you click on the "release" button...
$poll = true;
$number_of_tries = 1;
while ($poll)
{
// Here we simulate a request (last mtime of file could be a creation/update_date field on a base)
clearstatcache();
$mtime = filemtime('poll.txt');
if ($mtime > $time) {
$result = htmlentities(file_get_contents('poll.txt'));
$poll = false;
}
// Of course, else your polling will kill your resources!
$number_of_tries++;
sleep(1);
}
// Outputs result
echo "Number of tries : {$number_of_tries}<br/>{$result}";
die();
}
// Here we catch the release form
if (isset($_GET['release']))
{
$data = '';
if (isset($_GET['data'])) {
$data = $_GET['data'];
}
file_put_contents('poll.txt', $data);
die();
}
?>
<!-- click this button to begin long-polling -->
<input id="poll" type="button" value="Click me to start polling" />
<br/><br/>
Give me some text here :
<br/>
<input id="data" type="text" />
<br/>
<!-- click this button to release long-polling -->
<input id="release" type="button" value="Click me to release polling" disabled="disabled" />
<br/><br/>
Result after releasing polling :
<div id="result"></div>
<script type="text/javascript" src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.6.2/jquery.min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
// Script to launch polling
$('#poll').click(function() {
$('#poll').attr('disabled', 'disabled');
$('#release').removeAttr('disabled');
$.ajax({
url: 'poll.php',
data: {
poll: 'yes' // sets our $_GET['poll']
},
success: function(data) {
$('#result').html(data);
$('#poll').removeAttr('disabled');
$('#release').attr('disabled', 'disabled');
}
});
});
// Script to release polling
$('#release').click(function() {
$.ajax({
url: 'poll.php',
data: {
release: 'yes', // sets our $_GET['release']
data: $('#data').val() // sets our $_GET['data']
}
});
});
</script>
You can try it here
