Re: keeping connection alive while spending time building a zip file

Short of timed-redirects, you need to off-load the ZIPping of the files to a separate process that you can fire off (say, a Unix socket based server of your own design in Perl). Then, use Javascript on the client and a small bit of AJAX to send up status info. When it's done, have the Javascript redirect to the file.

Information doesn't want to be free. It wants to be feline.

Comment on Re: keeping connection alive while spending time building a zip file

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Re^2: keeping connection alive while spending time building a zip file by afoken (Chancellor) on Aug 11, 2011 at 11:28 UTC
What if Javscript is not available (links, lynx, wget, curl, LWP::UserAgent) or blocked (NoScript, ...)? Some people, when confronted with a problem, think "I know, I'll use Javascript." Now they have two problems. Alexander -- Today I will gladly share my knowledge and experience, for there are no sweeter words than "I told you so". ;-)	[reply]
Re^3: keeping connection alive while spending time building a zip file by scorpio17 (Canon) on Aug 11, 2011 at 13:05 UTC
If you use fork, and build the zip file with the child process, then the parent process can redirect to a "status" page. The status page will either display "working..." or "not done yet" while the zip is being built, or else display a clickable link to the zip once it's done. The ajax/javascript version of the page will automatically refresh the status every few seconds. If javascript is not available, you could try using a meta tag refresh, or else instruct users to click "reload" periodically (or put a message like "check back later" inside a noscript tag).	[reply]