can u run a php script from the command line??

steveryan

for example, i have a script written in PHP which does some spring cleaning work. i don't want to have to go to that script through my browser everytime i run it, but rather run it as a cronjob.

can php scripts be run from the command line? if so, do they work in the exact same way?

thanks

fuji

The way i would do it would be to get the server's text browser to run on a cron job...

i believe the command would look something like this:

0 2 5 lynx -dump http://www.blah.com/springcleaning.php

I'm not an expert at cron's and all that... this is just off the top of my head so i believe this will run at 2 am on friday....

but that should run the php script you have .....

man crontab for more info...
man lynx for more info as well....

frigidman

You may want to check to see if your PHP was installed as a command line app as well as the web browser dso.

You can also install PHP as a command line app too, by turning off the with apache configure element.

If that sounds confusing, sorry... it is. Most OS Distros today, install both php versions (webserver and commandline). But if you did it yourself from scratch, you may not have installed the commandline version as well. Basically you configure and compile it exactly like the web server version, but you leave off the with-apache.

Ok, BACK to your question... YES, you can run PHP as command line (I do it with a TON of cron jobs and also with just server SSH access commands and tools for doing things with email servers, dns servers etc).

I used to use 'wget' with a cron job, to http://localhost/path/to/cron.php ... but that was not reliable, as sometimes apache would be in the middle of a HUP or something else it was doing and conflicted with the run of the cron php to be run as well! AA!!

So I made them into php command line executables, and they work great.

At the extreme very top line of the PHP, you put:
#!/usr/bin/php -q

Then you chmod to be an executable:
chmod 750 /path/to/cron.php

THEN, you can simple type (or put into your crontabs) "/path/to/cron.php" and it will execute. The "-q" option in the header... just tells php to not spit out the content type headers, since itsbeing run as command line, you normally dont want to see that crud.

If yous got more questions about all this rambling I did, don't hesitate to ask.

frigidman

Sorry, forgot a lil bit more info.

If you happen to have custom "include" directives in your apache virtualhost setups per website, so that the includes directory is X instead of default Y... then you need to make sure you apply that to the PHP execution in the php as well.
Like this:
#!/usr/bin/php -q -d include_path=".:/var/www/html/website"

The following is a typical crontab file that would be run by a crontab event:

#!/bin/sh
/path/to/cron.php

Thats all. Since the cron.php was setup to have all the execute stuff in the top of the file. If you didnt want to do it that way, you can pull all that out and execute ANY php on your server with a cron file of:

#!/bin/sh
php -q -d include_path=".:/var/www/html/website" /path/to/cron.php

AND LASTLY, if you want to "store" all the junk that comes out of the cron execution into some seperate file so it doesnt get emailed to "root"... you can do something like this:

#!/bin/sh
php -q -d include_path=".:/var/www/html/website" /path/to/cron.php >> /var/log/httpd/cron_php_output

phew!
🙁

steveryan

i'm gonna have to go digest all that. thanks for the help 😉