Joomla 3.x and SSE

Question

Is it possible to implement SSE on Joomla, like how it is implemented in pure PHP here?

Here is what I have so far:

administrator/components/com_component/controllers/sync.php

class ComponentControllerSync extends JControllerLegacy
    public function execute()
    {
            $close = array(
                    'id' => 'CLOSE',
                    'message' => 'stream closed');

            $progress = array(
                    'id' => 'PROGRESS',
                    'message' => '100/100 done',
                    'progress' => '100%');

            header('Content-Type: text/event-stream');
            header('Cache-Control: no-cache');
            echo "data: " . json_encode($progress) . PHP_EOL;
            echo PHP_EOL;
            ob_flush();
            flush();

            sleep(5);

            echo "data: " . json_encode($close) . PHP_EOL;
            echo PHP_EOL;
            ob_flush();
            flush();

            JFactory::getApplication()->close();
    }
}

JavaScript which calls the controller

(function($, window, document){
    $(function(){
            $('#sync').on('click', function(){
                    $.eventsource({
                            label: 'evt',
                            url: 'index.php?option=com_component&task=sync.execute',
                            dataType: 'text',
                            open: function(data) {
                                    console.log('started');
                            },
                            message: function(e) {
                                    var json = e;
                                    var id = e.id;

                                    if(id == 'PROGRESS'){
                                            console.log(json.message + json.progress);
                                    }
                                    else if(id == 'CLOSE'){
                                            console.log(json.message);
                                            $.eventsource('close', 'evt');
                                    }
                                    else if(id == 'ERROR'){
                                            console.log(json.message);
                                            $.eventsource('close', 'evt');
                                    }
                            }
                    });
            });
    });
})(window.jQuery, window, document);

Joomla takes all of the echos into a buffer then presents the output to the client, which is the opposite of what I wanted. Is there a way to go around this buffer and stream the echos?

Answer 1

By default, Joomla executes a controller and renders a page in way defined to optimize buffering in a single output. Your routine works in a different way, having control over the output and browser channel.

Besides the buffering issue, the main problem with long-running PHP scripts is web server session timeout (max_execution_time). Even if it returns periodic outputs to the browser with the detailed technique, the session can be killed if the page does complete before max_execution_time.

If you cannot define a max_execution_time or, for performance reasons, max_execution_time has to be short, it is better to break the task in asynchronic callbacks, and keep the execution time in the same order than a common page.