How to make AJAX requests while a PHP script is running

[CrimpJiggler]

I made a PHP spider which downloads a series of wiki pages from a list, I put a 2 second delay in there so as not to cause excessive traffic and as a result, it takes a long time to load. I want to make the script tell you its made every time it saves a file, i.e. File 1 has been saved, file 2 has been saved etc. How can I make the PHP script make an AJAX request each time it iterates through a loop?

[codefossa]

You could save a message to a file and just have JS call a PHP page loading the contents of that file. Another option is to just run the script in a terminal, where echoing out a string will show right in front of you live.

[trq]

Take a look at the Symfony "Process" component.

[CrimpJiggler]

You could save a message to a file and just have JS call a PHP page loading the contents of that file. Another option is to just run the script in a terminal, where echoing out a string will show right in front of you live.

I tried your first solution, heres the PHP script:

echo '<div id="status_update">
STATUS UPDATE SHOULD APPEAR HERE
</div>';

for ($i=1; $i < 10; $i++) {

	echo "Number $i<br>";
	
	$fh = fopen('include/status_update.txt','w');
	fwrite($fh,"Line $i");
	fclose($fh);
	
	sleep('3');
	
}

and heres the javascript:

function status_update() {

	var xmlhttp;
	if (window.XMLHttpRequest)
	  {// code for IE7+, Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari
	  xmlhttp=new XMLHttpRequest();
	  }
	else
	  {// code for IE6, IE5
	  xmlhttp=new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP");
	  }
	xmlhttp.onreadystatechange=function()
	  {
	  if (xmlhttp.readyState==4 && xmlhttp.status==200)
		{
		document.getElementById("status_update").innerHTML=xmlhttp.responseText;
		}
	  }
	xmlhttp.open("GET","include/status_update.txt",true);
	xmlhttp.send();
	
}

setInterval(function(){ status_update(); },1000);

but it doesn't work, the AJAX doesn't seem to load while the PHP script is loading. In the PHP script, I put in sleep('3') which makes the script wait 3 seconds for each iteration of the loop, that would be plenty of time for the javascript to make these AJAX requests.

[CrimpJiggler]

Wait a minute, it doesn't work on chrome but it works on firefox. If I can figure out how to get it to work on all browsers, then it would be a very elegant solution compared to the ones I've read about, all of which require the PHP script to be initiated by AJAX.

[kicken]

You have to break this up into separate scripts. One that will do the downloading and one that will do the status updates.