PHP Flush() not working in Chrome

Question

I stumbled upon this function which promised to work across IE, FF & Chrome. But it does not work in Chrome. Is there a work around?

function buffer_flush(){

    echo str_pad('', 512);
    echo '<!-- -->';

    if(ob_get_length()){

        @ob_flush();
        @flush();
        @ob_end_flush();

    }

    @ob_start();
}

Answer 1

There are several components that can have impact on this issue.

Read carefully through the documentation of this function: http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.flush.php

One solution I had was using Apache2 with mod-php (not as fcgi but as native apache-module) and Chromium. The result came immediately and the script was still running and sending more results.

After typing the following two code-lines every echo-command will immediately push the text to the whatever-PHP-backend:

ob_implicit_flush(1);
@ob_end_flush(); // set an end to the php-output-buffer!

But this php backend can have its own buffer. For example I run nginx as webserver and php is used by the fast-cgi module. Nginx itself has its own buffer ... and so on.

The Browser also can buffer the request. But as I experience Chromium (or Google Chrome) has a verry small or no buffer.

Please read the documentation of every function I mentioned to understand what they really do - but specially the documentation of flush().

Personal hint: Do not put extra characters into the output-buffer but read and understand the configuration of your server.

EDIT: If you have gzip enabled the whole response from the server will be buffered.