So every once in a while I want/need to write some code that may take some time to execute. The problem is because it takes so long to execute, I need to make sure to give the user some feedback during this process so they know the page is working. If I hit submit in a page and nothing changes in my screen after 20-30 seconds I assume something is wrong. For example, I wrote a php page that would query multiple users in one db, then for each user load their xml data from another db and parse out the information to return a report for all users in the date range. Depending on the date range, this could take a few minutes to complete. This is where the php output buffer comes into play. Continue reading “ob_start(), ob_flush(), flush(), set_time_limit() – Give user feedback during execution”