在服务器上加载网页 - PHP

Question

I have a web page that contains a php script that pulls data from an API and stores it in a database. My problem is that the script takes 10 minutes to run and stops if the user navigates away from the page on which it's loading - not ideal!

To solve this I'd like to run/load this page on my server as a background job so that a users can still navigate the site without the site or script hanging.

I've had a look at shell_exec but cant seem to make that work:

<?php
shell_exec("/usr/bin/php http://example.com/data_base_update.php &");
?>

Does anyone know how to trigger a URL on the server, for example http://example.com/data_base_update.php without using a cron job?

Thanks,

Matt

Answer 1

I am not a PHP expert, however your approach for achieving the goal seems bit wrong.

My recommendation is whenever the URL is hit, start an async task in the background and return the control immediately. Writing async task in PHP does not look simple, however this theard will help. You can also use PThreads.