Re: [nyphp-talk] WAMP (minus the M) forking question - also open to other ideas

[Michael J. Forte]

Hi John and Elijah, Thank you for the input. I spent most of the night trying to get this to work and determined the following: - START /B does not appear to work. - pclose(popen($cmd)); still hangs the parent - I found COM(Wscript.Shell) ... $->Run(...) on the web but could not get it working. It would spawn a cmd.exe but would not run the rest of the command. The cmd.exe child would not die. If I ran the same command from Start > Run it would work just fine. $WshShell = new COM(Wscript.Shell); $oRun = $WshShell->Run("cmd /C php.exe -f child.php"); - As a last resort I was going to compile Elijah's C code but was really hoping there would be a built-in method. I might still end up using it in the end. - Found COM(Wscript.Shell) ... $->Exec() on MSDN and it worked! I have to give the full path to the exe and script as environmental variables are not available. All in all, I have no clue if COM ... ->Exec() is the best way to do this, if it is secure, or why COM .. ->Run() did not work. I have not used COM much and found it hard to wade through the doc at php.net. Ultimately, I have learned that it would be much nicer if you could simply fork in Windows as you can in *nix. If there are any other suggestions out there, please let me know! I am all ears and trying to learn. Thank you for the support! Michael J. Forte Web Designer, WR Web Designs Webmaster, Town of LaFayette Software Engineer, IBM Education: Clarkson University Alum (2005) :: Resume E-mail: michaelfo...@hotmail.com "Often those who work the hardest are the luckiest..." Elijah Insua wrote: Here is some C code I had laying around which executes a detached process, much like START. #include <windows.h> #include <process.h> #include <stdio.h> int main(int argc, char *argv[]) {     if (argc < 2)     {         printf("Fork32 v1.0 - A windows process splitter\n\n");         printf("Usage: fork32.exe C:\\full\\path\\to\\application.exe");         return 0;     }         _spawnl( _P_DETACH, argv[2], NULL);     return 1; } hope it helps -- Elijah On Tue, Apr 28, 2009 at 12:42 AM, John Campbell <jcampbe...@gmail.com> wrote: A quick google search for "windows run process in background" yielded: "In case anyone has this problem in future, I finally found out the solution. The START command in Windows command line allows you to start another command window running any command; and the /B option can start the command without the extra command window, so you get similar behavior to Unix's background processes. Look it up for more details." I don't use windows, but I trigger background processes with and "&" in *nix, and it looks like windows offers the same functionality with "start /b" regards, John Campbell On Tue, Apr 28, 2009 at 12:16 AM, Michael J. Forte <michaelfo...@hotmail.com> wrote: > Hi experienced and talented community of which I have been trolling for a > few years! > > I have a question for all of you and I hope this makes sense. > > First, the background. I am coding a PHP Web application that has to call a > external program, however, because only one instance of the program can be > ran at a time I need to implement a queue. In addition, it is important the > users need to not wait (keep the browser open) for their job to process. The > script will send them an e-mail with a link after their job completes. This > means I need something to persistently run whenever there is something in > the queue. In summary: front end script calls secondary child which runs > until queue is empty by calling external program. > > My problem is, I cannot figure out how to properly fork under Windows, > allowing the parent script to run to completion, and not hang the browser > waiting for the child to complete. I am at the point where I can spawn the > child and it will run even when the parent browser is closed but will not > release the parent script until it completes. I have tried exec(), system(), > shell_exec(), popen(), and a COM call (which I might have done wrong). Each > of those called php -f childScript.php. > > I thought about a few other alternatives: > > 1. Use a scheduled task to check for a queue at a set interval. This is the > least desired solution as it could cause unwanted delay. > 2. Write a PHP daemon/Win32 service to monitor a queue of which could be > queried and started if needed by parent script and it would run until the > queue is empty at which time it would shutdown. > 3. Write a Perl script to be called by the parent which would fork and call > the secondary PHP script, subsequently terminating and releasing the parent > PHP script. > > In summary: > > - WAMP environment, cannot use Linux as external program is Windows only > (BUMMER!) > - Need a queue to handle calls to an external program, currently stored in a > flat file > - Parent script needs to fork to a child script which can run independent of > the parent until queue is empty > - Parent script needs to be able to complete prior to child completing > - Because of time required to run a job and because of the potential for > many users, users need to be able to submit'n'run. > > Do any of you PHP gods (and goddesses!) have any thoughts on how to fork > under Windows, how to handle this situation, or alternatives? Should I be > using some other language? Perl, AJAX, other? > > Google (or my search string) was less than helpful. > > -- > Thank you, > Michael J. Forte > Web Designer, WR Web Designs > Webmaster, Town of LaFayette > Software Engineer, IBM > > Education: Clarkson University Alum (2005) :: Resume > E-mail: michaelfo...@hotmail.com > > "Often those who work the hardest are the luckiest..." > _______________________________________________ > New York PHP User Group Community Talk Mailing List > http://lists.nyphp.org/mailman/listinfo/talk > > http://www.nyphp.org/show_participation.php > _______________________________________________ New York PHP User Group Community Talk Mailing List http://lists.nyphp.org/mailman/listinfo/talk http://www.nyphp.org/show_participation.php _______________________________________________ New York PHP User Group Community Talk Mailing List http://lists.nyphp.org/mailman/listinfo/talk http://www.nyphp.org/show_participation.php

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