Ajax: php progress bar

[tutor]

Hi there,

I started designing this little project as I wanted a progress bar to let a user know how far through a list of php functions they are.

There is no way of doing this with php alone, since php is all processed on the client.

however, the idea I had in mind was to
1) calculate how many steps the php function has
then 2) run through each step,
- after each step the page would upate to diplay the progress. Obviously doing this with ajax would be preferable


However, Im a little stuck.

So far I've got ajax to work with a button:
<input type='button' name= "updateWithBut" onclick="getNoOfCycles(this.value);getCurrentCycle ('1', '100'); ">

This gets the data from php via some ajax script (and correctly updates 2 input boxes)

However. I cant figure out a way to do one cycle after another and update the page after each cyle has processed

If I cycle through the javascript, it only sends back the final response

if I try to make the button do various functions:
<input type='button' name= "updateWithBut" onclick="getNoOfCycles(this.value);getCurrentCycle ('1', '100');getCurrentCycle('2', '100');getCurrentCycle('3', '100');...getCurrentCycle('nth', '100');">
once again it only sends back the final response

Does anyone know a way of doing this, or know what I should be looking into?