Page busy indicator

[elentz]

I freely admit I am pretty green in alot of this stuff.  I have a php page that runs arp-scan and returns information on MAC addresses for the network.  It takes 10 seconds probably.  I am looking for a visual indication to tell the user that the scan is in progress.  I have no idea what this is even called.  Can someone point me in the direction I need to go to figure this out?

 

Thanks

[requinix]

Do the work during an AJAX request, not on a regular page load, and then you can do anything you want: message, spinning thing, busy cursor, whatever.

[Jacques1]

You cannot do this with PHP alone, because a long-running PHP script delays the entire response so that the user just sees a blank window.

 

You need JavaScript. More specifically: You need to trigger the PHP script with Ajax. The spinning wheel is called a throbber, and there are plenty of libraries. When you've received the response, you hide the throbber and insert the data from the PHP script into the page (you should make the PHP script output JSON data rather than a plain string).

 

Start with the Ajax part.

[elentz]

Thanks for the direction guys!