Closing a connection early with PHP

Question

I've been trying to complete a script that sends the proper notification to a users browser to close the connection, but allows the server to keep processing a request. My code is based on what I've seen on:

http://www.php.net/manual/en/features.connection-handling.php#71172

and

close a connection early

ob_start();
echo ('Text the user will see');
$size = ob_get_length();
ignore_user_abort(); // optional
header('Content-Encoding: none');
header("Content-Length: $size");
header("Connection: close");
// flush all output
ob_end_flush();
ob_flush();
flush();

sleep(5);
//just a test to see if the script continues to run 
file_put_contents("trash/".date('dmY-H_i_s_1').".txt", "Some text.");
file_put_contents("trash/".date('dmY-H_i_s_2').".txt", "Some text.");
file_put_contents("trash/".date('dmY-H_i_s_3').".txt", "Some text.");

When I go to run the script, sometimes it will create the first file but not write the text to it. Sometimes it doesn't create any files. If I run the script with the return early code commented out, all three files are created just fine. Zlib compression is turned off. Any ideas?

if you want the server to stop processing the request use: exit() or die() — Packet Tracer, Oct 04 '11 at 15:54
You mean you want to close the connection to the browser, but keep doing stuff in PHP in the background? Don't think you can, unless you spawn a separate process. — Lightness Races in Orbit, Oct 04 '11 at 15:54
@FeidaKila: How will he be able to work with files after `exit`ing or `die`ing? — Lightness Races in Orbit, Oct 04 '11 at 15:55
Yes, I do want the server to continue doing work in the background after closing the connection. — Vince, Oct 04 '11 at 16:35

Xeoncross · Answer 1 · 2011-10-04T16:00:34.087

0

~~You can set your extra processing to take place with register_shutdown_function.~~

Basically, you register something to take place after you script finishes and sends all output to the user. That way the script can keep running for a while after that doing whatever cleanup or what not is needed.

Update: My bad, that no long applies after PHP 4.1

The links you gave and the other stuff I found seems to state you are doing it right. Are you sure there isn't an error or script timeout going on? What does the PHP error log state?

edited Oct 04 '11 at 16:00

answered Oct 04 '11 at 15:53

Xeoncross

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No errors in the error log. Its like it try's to execute the next command after the final flush and then goes away after that. – Vince Oct 04 '11 at 16:34

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 04 '11 at 16:07

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ignore_user_abort() must have a non-null parameter for it to actually ignore user abort. Otherwise it just returns the current ignore setting without changing anything. so you'd need

ignore_user_abort(true);

answered Oct 04 '11 at 16:07

Marc B

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score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 04 '11 at 19:14

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The right way to do this is to use php in fastcgi mode and then you can use the function fastcgi_finish_request(); it will do exactly what you need - it will close the connection to the browser but the rest of the script will continue to run to the end.

http://php-fpm.org/wiki/Features

It's much better than relying on output buffering.

answered Oct 04 '11 at 19:14

Dmitri Snytkine

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I would love to give it a try, however our production environment is not currently setup to use fastcgi and it is not an immediate option to switch it over. – Vince Oct 04 '11 at 22:07

Closing a connection early with PHP

3 Answers3

Update: My bad, that no long applies after PHP 4.1

Linked