Here's one way to send and close the connection to the client and for the PHP script to continue processing, presumably to perform some processing that is time-consuming:

<?php
ob_end_clean();
header("Connection: close\r\n");
header("Content-Encoding: none\r\n");
ignore_user_abort(true); // optional
ob_start();
echo ('Text user will see');
$size = ob_get_length();
header("Content-Length: $size");
ob_end_flush();     // Strange behaviour, will not work
flush();            // Unless both are called !
ob_end_clean();
 
//do processing here
sleep(5);
 
echo('Text user will never see');
//do some processing

Note that some stackoverflow answers which mention the use of ignore_user_abort are mistaken. That's not required at all. And you'll need the Content-Encoding: none header, otherwise it won't work properly with clients that accept gzip encoding for example.

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