Can a PHP script continue running after ending the HTTP request?

Question

How do I write a PHP script that continues running, even after flushing out some text and ending the HTTP request? Is this possible?

Answer 1

You might be interested by the ignore_user_abort configuration directive, and/or the ignore_user_abort function :

Sets whether a client disconnect should cause a script to be aborted.

Using this, you could :

• generate the part of the page that has to be sent to the browser
• flush the output, with flush and/or ob_flush
• call ignore_user_abort (either now or before)
• do some more work

The user's browser will probably still indicate "waiting" or "loading", but the content of the page will be loaded and displayed -- and even if the user presses "stop", your script should continue its execution.

For more informations, there is an example on the manual's page of that function -- and you can take a look at this article : How to Use ignore_user_abort() to Do Processing Out of Band

Of course, while this can be used for some light process (like "cleaning up" stuff at the end of a page, while displaying it as fast as possible to the user), you'll still be limited by max_execution_time and the like.

So, this is not a solution that should be used for long/heavy calculations.