Access Codeigniter functions from external script

[eluser]drkameleon[/eluser]
[quote author="Aken" date="1343722036"]Why can't your background task be part of your CI app?[/quote]

Well, I'm all ears if you have any suggestion on how I could do this.

Here's what I'm basically trying to do (=current approach) :

- from page A : user completes a form and initiates an ajax request.
- this ajax request sends all form input to an intermediate script (let's call it interm.php)
- interm.php initiates a background task (php script) - let's call it background.php and returns a tracking number.

e.g.

Code:

$command = "/usr/local/bin/php /public_html/r/path_to_baackground.php $params > /dev/null &";
exec($command);

What I want to do is :

- have background.php running in the background and update a tracking value (somewhere in the db?)
- keep sending ajax requests from page A, to some progress-tracking script, and show the progress
- when background.php has finished, show the results