Please help: Prevent time-outs

Hi All !

Could somebody help me out on this one:

My script needs to execute a time consuming process which might take
as long as an hour or so to finish. Usually, the time limit would
produce a time out after 30 seconds or so. Modifying the
set_time_limit() does not resolve the problem since the browser then
shows a could not display page error after 2 minutes or so.

Also, I do not need to wait for browser output after the process
finishes. Instead the server would send me an email.

In short words:
How can I get a script to work during an hours so without producing a
time-out and being able to close the browser upon starting the script.
Sort of "Fire and Forget".

Your help is greatly appreciated.
Jerry

"Jerry" <submitstuff@lycos.com> wrote in message
news:j9m5c05quvpmv2llggvikl248qofav0ie8@4ax.com...
> Hi All !
>
> Could somebody help me out on this one:
>
> My script needs to execute a time consuming process which might take
> as long as an hour or so to finish. Usually, the time limit would
> produce a time out after 30 seconds or so. Modifying the
> set_time_limit() does not resolve the problem since the browser then
> shows a could not display page error after 2 minutes or so.
>
> Also, I do not need to wait for browser output after the process
> finishes. Instead the server would send me an email.
>
> In short words:
> How can I get a script to work during an hours so without producing a
> time-out and being able to close the browser upon starting the script.
> Sort of "Fire and Forget".
>
> Your help is greatly appreciated.
> Jerry

Does running the script from the command line (php -f script.php) not suit
your purposes?

Garp

"Jerry" <submitstuff@lycos.com> wrote in message
news:j9m5c05quvpmv2llggvikl248qofav0ie8@4ax.com...
> Hi All !
>
> Could somebody help me out on this one:
>
> My script needs to execute a time consuming process which might take
> as long as an hour or so to finish. Usually, the time limit would
> produce a time out after 30 seconds or so. Modifying the
> set_time_limit() does not resolve the problem since the browser then
> shows a could not display page error after 2 minutes or so.
>
> Also, I do not need to wait for browser output after the process
> finishes. Instead the server would send me an email.
>
> In short words:
> How can I get a script to work during an hours so without producing a
> time-out and being able to close the browser upon starting the script.
> Sort of "Fire and Forget".

To prevent browser time out you need to send something--a HTML comment
perhaps--to it every now and then. Not a good solution though for a script
that runs for an hour, since a lot of data could be transferred in that time
and the browser could crash from the massive DOM tree.

register_shutdown_function() might be what you're looking for.