W-Shadow.com

exec ("/usr/bin/php path/to/script.php >/dev/null &");

function launchBackgroundProcess($call) {
     // Windows
    if(is_windows()){
        pclose(popen('start /b '.$call, 'r'));
    }
     // Some sort of UNIX
    else {
        pclose(popen($call.' > /dev/null &', 'r'));
    }
    return true;
}
 
function is_windows(){
    if(PHP_OS == 'WINNT' || PHP_OS == 'WIN32'){
        return true;
    }
    return false;
}

function backgroundPost($url){
  $parts=parse_url($url);

  $fp = fsockopen($parts['host'], 
          isset($parts['port'])?$parts['port']:80, 
          $errno, $errstr, 30);
          
  if (!$fp) {
      return false;
  } else {
      $out = "POST ".$parts['path']." HTTP/1.1\r\n";
      $out.= "Host: ".$parts['host']."\r\n";
      $out.= "Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded\r\n";
      $out.= "Content-Length: ".strlen($parts['query'])."\r\n";
      $out.= "Connection: Close\r\n\r\n";
      if (isset($parts['query'])) $out.= $parts['query'];
  
      fwrite($fp, $out);
      fclose($fp);
      return true;
  }
}

//Example of use
backgroundPost('http://example.com/slow.php?file='.
                       urlencode('some file.dat'));

75 Responses to “How To Run A PHP Script In The Background”

1. Jumbo says:

   July 1, 2012 at 17:04

   Hello

   I tried to run this comment:
   exec (“/usr/bin/php /public_html/test/test-exec.php >/dev/null &”);

   the test file test-exec.php should input something in my DB, but nothing happens…

   Is the syntax I’m using correct?

   Thanx

2. Jumbo says:

   July 1, 2012 at 17:04

   sorry i meant command, not comment 😀

3. Jānis Elsts says:

   July 1, 2012 at 17:29

   The syntax looks correct. Try running the command in the terminal/shell instead of PHP. It should tell you if there are any syntax errors.

4. Brent F says:

   July 9, 2013 at 03:39

   I think this is exactly what I am looking for but i can’t get it to run. I am using the following code:

   public function backgroundPost($url){
   echo ‘got here. URL = ‘.$url;
   ignore_user_abort(true);
   set_time_limit(0);

   $parts=parse_url($url);

   $fp = fsockopen($parts[‘host’],
   isset($parts[‘port’])?$parts[‘port’]:80,
   $errno, $errstr, 30);

   if (!$fp) {
   return false;
   } else {
   $out = ‘POST ‘.$parts[‘path’].’ HTTP/1.1\r\n’;
   $out.= ‘Host: ‘.$parts[‘host’].’\r\n’;
   $out.= ‘Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded\r\n’;
   $out.= ‘Content-Length: ‘.strlen($parts[‘query’]).’\r\n’;
   $out.= ‘Connection: Close\r\n\r\n’;

   if (isset($parts[‘query’])) $out.= $parts[‘query’];

   fwrite($fp, $out);
   fclose($fp);
   return true;
   }
   }

   and am calling it this way:

   backgroundPost(‘http://www.example.com/cf.php’)

   It gets to the backgroundPost function but doesn’t seem to get to the url (e.g., cf.php file). I believe this is the case because I can hit the cf.php file manually and it does what i need it to but if I use the backgroundPost, nothing happens. I am not sure how to debug it.

   Any ideas?

   Brent

5. Jānis Elsts says:

   July 9, 2013 at 11:38

   Try placing that “echo” just before the fwrite() call. If it doesn’t get to that point, it probably can’t open a connection to the server for some reason. In that case $errno and $errstr should contain error information.

6. Brent F says:

   July 9, 2013 at 19:05

   I moved the echo and it displayed fine. I also echo’d the $errno and $errstr which returned 0 and blank respectively. So it appears to flow properly but it isn’t getting to the cf.php. I added a variable to the end of the url and tried to echo the variable on cf.php but nothing. So maybe I am not sure what is supposed to happen here. I through that this function was supposed to kick off a call to the url and run what ever code is triggered by visiting the url. Is that correct or am I missing something?

   Thanks Janis.

7. Jānis Elsts says:

   July 13, 2013 at 11:02

   As far as I can see, you’re not missing anything. I’m not sure why it doesn’t work.

   If you can run the script locally, try using Fiddler or Wireshark to monitor HTTP traffic and see if the request is actually sent.

8. Brent F says:

   August 4, 2013 at 08:58

   I am still looking for a way to do this. After many many hours of testing it appears to work once and then stop. So if I change the url to http://www.example.com and run it, i get an error obviously. When I change the url to the correct one it works once and then if I try to run it again it does process the script at the url, unless I first change it back to example and let it error.

   Any ideas why that would be? Is the socket left open or in some limbo state? I am not familiar with fsockopen so i am not sure where to turn.

   Any ideas? I am using a GoDaddy Shared host if that helps?

9. Jānis Elsts says:

   August 4, 2013 at 10:45

   No, the socket probably doesn’t stay open. If the function works, it will also close the socket. That’s what that fclose() does. And even if it did stay open, I don’t think it would stop working after the first run – each subsequent call would just open a new socket (which would waste some RAM, but that’s beside the point).

   Try adding a small delay (1-2 seconds) between runs. Also, does GoDaddy provide some kind of HTTP access log? You could check if your requests are showing up in there.

10. Syam S says:

    May 6, 2014 at 23:50

    @White Shadow . Awsome Post Thanks.

    @Brent F,

    Dont know you already found a resolution, I also came across the same issue and fixed it by changing single quotes to double quote in $out variable.
    Also i used some additional headers as below

                           $out = "POST" . $parts ['path']."?".$parts ['query']." HTTP/1.1\r\n";
    			$out .= "Host: " . $parts ['host'] . "\r\n";
    			$out .= "User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:28.0)   Gecko/20100101 Firefox/28.0\r\n";
    			$out .= "Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8\r\n";
    			$out .= "Accept-Language: en-US,en;q=0.5\r\n";
    			$out .= "Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate\r\n";
    			$out .= "Connection: Close\r\n\r\n";
    

    Hope this will help

11. Ben Haug says:

    May 31, 2015 at 12:59

    I’ve use this script for years. But after upgrading PHP from 5.3 to 5.4.40 it have stopped working.

    Unfortunately there isn’t much info in the logs.

    Does anybody have an idea how I may get it running again?

12. Jānis Elsts says:

    May 31, 2015 at 14:32

    I’m not sure what could cause the script to stop working without logging any errors. Did you change your PHP configuration in anyway when upgrading to 5.4.x? Safe mode, open_basedir, Suhosin, disabled functions – anything like that?

13. Ben Haug says:

    June 1, 2015 at 00:05

    Thanks for fast reply Jānis.
    Good news: I rebuilt the script from scratch (with your code) and it works again.

    I have to apologize for disturbing you. The script is really awesome, I use it for running a series of SQL-scripts that pulls data from MS Dynamics NAV into a MySQL DB and thereafter re-indexing in the bacground.

    Thanks again!

14. Hoogesh Dawoodarry says:

    February 18, 2016 at 02:48

    Hi,
    You are a legend. After hours trying to make exec work.

    Thanks heaps

15. Omar Hasan says:

    October 4, 2018 at 16:14

    Thanks a lot bro……….