PHP file_get_contents() follow Content-length header

Question

i'm using code like this:

//section with the important stuff for the client
ob_start();
echo "Blah... Random Content" . rand(1,1000);
$size = ob_get_length();
header("Content-Length: $size");
header('Connection: close');
ob_end_flush();
ob_flush();
flush();
//all the following output/script running time should be ignored by the client (file_get_contents())
sleep(10);
echo "long action completed";

to output some content and subsequently running a time consuming background job.
In a other file i'm trying to access the data of the first script without having to wait for the background job to finish.
Unfortunately this here doesn't work for me:

$content = file_get_contents("http://some-address/thescript.php");
echo $content;

as it doesn't pay attention to the Content-length header. In the browser the whole thing works fine though. Any suggestions? Thanks.

Ridgepole

not finished yet. but technically the same. I'm just trying to find a way to tell PHP to pay attention to the content-length header – Ridgepole

Try cURL then, or add the $length parameter to f_g_c(). – Freaky

doctor my elbow hurts, well technically, its not my elbow, but fix what ever it is anyway - some people are funny. – Pseudaxis

I've considered the use of cURL before but unfortunately it's not available on every system. Adding the $length parameter to f_g_c() doesn't work as the content length changes dynamically. – Ridgepole

@Dagon the only thing that will be changed later is the content (it'll be fetched from a db) but i really don't think that would be important here – Ridgepole

This works fine with curl. Not sure why you'd want / expect file_get_contents to respond to headers. If you're really stuck, use a process fork to carry out the background op. – Eastwood

i got it working with file_get_contents(), no need to fork it – Ridgepole

@Ridgepole - "I've considered the use of cURL before but unfortunately it's not available on every system." Well, that's not quite true. Here is a very complete cURL emulation layer. – Psychosurgery

i'll have a look at that, thanks – Ridgepole

Answer 1

Fixed it. In case anyone has the same problem:

$url = "http://some-adress/test.php";
$headers = get_headers($url, 1);
$content_length = $headers["Content-Length"];
$content = file_get_contents($url, NULL, NULL, NULL, $content_length);
echo $content;

Ridgepole