PHP: How to return information to a waiting script and continue processing

Question

Suppose there are two scripts Requester.php and Provider.php, and Requester requires processing from Provider and makes an http request to it (Provider.php?data=\"data\"). In th

Answer 1

You could start another php process in Provider.php using pcntl_fork()

Provider.php 
{
    // Fork process
    $pid = pcntl_fork();

    // You are now running both a daemon process and the parent process
    // through the rest of the code below

    if ($pid > 0) {
        // PARENT Process
        $answer = getAnswer($_GET['data']);
        echo $answer;    
        //SIGNAL TO REQUESTER THAT WE ARE FINISHED
        return;
    }

    if ($pid == 0) {
        // DAEMON Process
        processDBUpdates();
        return;
    }

    // If you get here the daemon process failed to start
    handleDaemonErrorCondition();
    return;

}