How does Laravel Artisan serve built-in server without blocking the terminal?

Question

I tried emulating artisan's serve command by using shell_exec() . But somehow once it boots up the terminal is blocked. I also tried running it in background and storing the output to a variable:

shell_exec("php -S localhost:8000 &"); // runs the server but blocks the terminal

$result = shell_exec("php -S localhost:8000 &> /dev/null 2>&1"); echo $result; // this does not show anything

The idea is so that I can create custom messages once php server is up.

Answer 1

Did you tired this!

"This function can return NULL both when an error occurs or the program produces no output. It is not possible to detect execution failures using this function. exec() should be used when access to the program exit code is required."

Ref