Wait until a callback address is called

debugcn Published at Dev

otorrillas

I am programming an educational web in PHP and JS and I interact with another webpage that corrects for me some programming exercises.
I don't know when this correction will finish, but this correction webpage calls a given address when the correction is available. Is it possible to wait for that result with PHP or JS and then do some stuff (not just showing the result to the user), even if the user closes the tab?

Thanks in advance.

STEP BY STEP explanation:

A student is trying to do a programming exercise. The statement of the exercise is shown, as well as other details to complete it.
When he thinks he has reached a solution, he uploads his code. Then, he can wait (or not) for the correction to finish.
1. My web page uploads then the code file (with other files as well as an address to callback when it finishes) to the corrector webpage.
2. I keep waiting until the callback is made.
When the correction is finished, I do some stuff like assigning a grade to the student and, if he/she stayed on the same page, he/she can see details of the correction.

The correction is done by another webpage and I don't know when it would finish, but when it finishes it calls a given adress (for example: www.example.com/ex1sub1usr1 ).

The doubts are between step 2 and 3. It is possible to do all this process with PHP/JS? If not, what are the alternatives?

pentaphobe

Updated Answer

Create a PHP script on your server which updates your grade database when visited with a specially formulated URL, eg. http://yourserver.com/update.php?user=2429&sub=1&ex=1
- specify this as the target URL when you submit for correction
- if you are restricted to your /ex1sub1usr1 format then just use regex to parse the URL
When user refreshes (or returns to your site) the data should be appropriately pulled from your PHP backend

For bonus points, you could have your submission screen (or the entire website) intermittently poll another PHP script URL on your server (with XHR) for an "updated" flag, and live update the page.

Considerations

Your only major concern will then be ensuring that the form data (ie. their code) is submitted completely. Consider using XHR to submit your form data and temporarily enabling a window closure warning until upload is complete.

Original "Answer"

Since there isn't much information to go by here, I will have to make a few assumptions:

you presumably can't reliably spawn a process to watch the associated results address
you don't need to notify the user immediately (push notifications), but they need eventually see their result, eg. when they return to your page
results stay around for a while
as you mention, this must work even if the user closes the tab

Given this scenario, I would merely check the results page when the user returns to your site.

Just store the results address in session vars - either via PHP or a cookie - then when the user returns you can perform any unfinished checks and update accordingly.

NB: Should further information surface in the question I will gladly provide further details

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edited at2021-06-29

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