Stop PHP output buffering

Question

Hi, I need to display continuous output from my php script. The script will stay in a loop of printing log data from a device and sleeping. My problem is that I can't get PHP or Apache to output data before the script is completed.

I have tried all the commands for flushing the output buffer, and I have read through the config-files for both PHP and Apache looking for some type of buffering to disable.

Is this possible to do with Apache and PHP on Windows, or should I consider some other platform?

Answer 1

Use these flushing the output buffer commands you've used already, and throw in an HTML comment, 1024 bytes long. Cause it's most likely browser issue, not server.

Ahh, looks like you're looking for the COMET application

http://www.zeitoun.net/articles/comet_and_php/start

Answer 2

The best way (most reliable and clean) to accomplish this is to use a server-side script which does the work, and a client-side AJAX script which will poll another server-side script which will return the status. In the web, data is buffered at different levels, to achieve optimization, and therefore it is difficult to accomplish what you want.

Answer 3

PHP's output_buffering setting is 0 by default (i.e. off), but you've no doubt investigated that.

I think @Palantir's suggestion is probably a good one: write the log entries to a local file, and then serve up that file (or parts thereof) to the client; the client can re-request however often you desire. This also has the advantage of not filling up the browser's buffer (i.e. you shouldn't just keep sending log data to the client ad infinitum).

But that wasn't your question.

Can you reproduce the output buffering problem with a simple script like the following?

<?php
while (TRUE)
{
    echo 'x';
    flush();
    sleep(1);
}
?>