PHP - Questions about sockets in php?

Question

1- Let's say my computer ip address is 111.11.111.11, and the server that my php script is on is 222.22.222.22, so if i access and run the php script that is on the server and start a socket server, which ip do my clients need to connect to?

2- Is it possible to have a socket running on php which keeps reading, and responding to the clients until I close the browser, So basically what i'm trying to do is to start a socket which keeps reading, and accepting clients, and keeps communicating with them multiple times with each.

thanks for the answer, but i think i didn't explain well enough on my question 2, so let me make it easier: Is it possible to create a chat server using php? because the point i was getting into was if it's possible to accept multiple clients and keep them alove.

Answer 1

1. 222.22.222.22. But it sounds like you are starting up a socket server in response to a HTTP request. Probably, that won't work as intended, since the PHP interpreter terminates after the response is sent. If you had permissions, you could fork a separate socket server process, but I don't know what that would accomplish.

2. No. Even if you kept the interpreter running, there is no way to tell when the browser closes. The closest you can get is determining the browser (as determined by cookies or IP) stops communicating with you.

Answer 2

1- 222.22.222.22, your server's IP.

2- When a visitor arrives you can spawn a 'socket process' and implement a client side 'heartbeat' application using JavaScript/AJAX, but that implies you running the socket backend script (possibly) for a long time, which may cause problems (Like having a lot of PHP processes open, depending on the way your web server is set up this may cause problems)