Polling data doesn't work

[php_nub_qq]

Hello,

 

I built myself a small long-polling type system to fetch data from a database dynamically or in other words a chat. But there is a problem. Instead of sending and receiving empty requests I thought I should create an infinite loop upon a request from the client side and only return when there is new data ( new message ). Not knowing why it doesn't work, but if I remove the loop and do it the old fashion way with thousand requests it works, see the code below

 

 

This doesn't work

	while(1==1){
		sleep(1);
		
		require('getMessages.php'); // Fetches new messages and returns them - this works there's no problem here
		
		if(!empty($messagesOutput)){
			break;
		}
	}

This works and echoes the text, so the variable is filled when new data is fetched

	while(1==1){
		sleep(1);
		
		require('getMessages.php');
		
		if(!empty($messagesOutput)){
			echo "TEST TO SEE IF VARIABLE IS FILLED";
		}
		
		break;
	}