Can PHP scripts continue to run even if the user closed the browser?

Question

For example, there is a very simple PHP script which updates some tables on database, but this process takes a long time (maybe 10 minutes). Therefore, I want this script to

Answer 1

The PHP script will keep running after the client terminates the connection (not doing so would be a security risk), but only up to max_execution_time (set in php.ini or through a PHP script, generally 30 seconds by default)..

For example:

";
        fwrite($fh,$i."\n");
        sleep(1);
    }
    fclose($fh);
?>

Start running that in your browser and close the browser before it completes. You'll find that after 20 seconds the file contains all of the values of $i.

Change the upper bound of the for loop to 100 instead of 20, and you'll find it only runs from 0 to 29. Because of PHP's max_execution_time the script times out and dies.