title: How do I close a connection early?
body: <p>I'm attempting to do an AJAX call (via JQuery) that will initiate a fairly long process. I'd like the script to simply send a response indicating that the process has started, but JQuery won't return the response until the PHP script is done running.</p>
  
  <p>I've tried this with a "close" header (below), and also with output buffering; neither seems to work. Any guesses? or is this something I need to do in JQuery?</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;?php
  
  echo( "We'll email you as soon as this is done." );
  
  header( "Connection: Close" );
  
  // do some stuff that will take a while
  
  mail( 'dude@thatplace.com', "okay I'm done", 'Yup, all done.' );
  
  ?&gt;
  </code></pre>