How to Cause a Redirect to Occur Before PHP Script Finishes

How to cause a redirect to occur before php script finishes?

If you want to run script continuously and still want to display some output then, why don't you use an ajax request to server which can queue mails and still let user continue browsing that page.

If you don't want to use this; instead you could use,
the script runs background even if the user will be redirected to show_usermessage.php page

<?PHP
    //Redirect to another file that shows that mail queued
    header("Location: show_usermessage.php");

    //Erase the output buffer
    ob_end_clean();

    //Tell the browser that the connection's closed
    header("Connection: close");

    //Ignore the user's abort (which we caused with the redirect).
    ignore_user_abort(true);
    //Extend time limit to 30 minutes
    set_time_limit(1800);
    //Extend memory limit to 10MB
    ini_set("memory_limit","10M");
    //Start output buffering again
    ob_start();

    //Tell the browser we're serious... there's really
    //nothing else to receive from this page.
    header("Content-Length: 0");

    //Send the output buffer and turn output buffering off.
    ob_end_flush();
    flush();
    //Close the session.
    session_write_close();

    //Do some of your work, like the queue can be ran here,
    //.......
    //.......
?>

PHP Redirect User and Continue Process Script

The other answers seem to be missing the point, why does the browser wait for the whole response to finish before redirecting.

I'm not positive about it, but is it a given that browsers will redirect immediately upon receiving the Location header? Or is it done when the connection terminates? Use Firebug to see what the network connection is doing and see if it prints those headers before the 10 seconds is up, or if it appears after 10 seconds.

In the Ruby on Rails world, the preferred solution is to send the job to a "delayed job" or "resqueue" server to run; this avoids trying to run long processes in a web server that needs to be available to handle web requests.

Redirect to specified URL on PHP script completion?

<?
ob_start(); // ensures anything dumped out will be caught

// do stuff here
$url = 'http://example.com/thankyou.php'; // this can be set based on whatever

// clear out the output buffer
while (ob_get_status()) 
{
    ob_end_clean();
}

// no redirect
header( "Location: $url" );
?>

Redirect page after process complete in PHP

Your code should be fine, and should complete the process before redirecting.

PHP runs in a single thread, so the next statement won't be executed until the previous one completes. This means that your header() line won't execute until fwrite() has finished writing the file.

In fact, setting a Location header doesn't even mean the PHP script stops. You can test this by creating a dummy file and running unlink() on it after issuing the Location header. The file will still be deleted. All that Location does is sends a new location to your browser. Your browser then retrieves the new page before the old one is done running.

PHP redirection in between

In case you still have to echo before your point where you may redirect then I suggest you add ob_start(); at the beginning of PHP script.

refers this answer

Will all code after redirect header in PHP always get executed?

Using the header function in PHP only adds to the headers of the response returned by the server. It does not immediately send any data and does not immediately terminate the connection. Any code after the header call will be executed.

In particular, it's a good idea to add a response body even after doing a 301 redirect so that clients that do not support the redirect also get some descriptive response. Infact according to the HTTP 1.1 specification Section 10.3.2 -

Unless the request method was HEAD, the entity of the response SHOULD
contain a short hypertext note with a hyperlink to the new URI(s). If
the 301 status code is received in response to a request other than
GET or HEAD, the user agent MUST NOT automatically redirect the
request unless it can be confirmed by the user, since this might
change the conditions under which the request was issued.

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