putenv() can not set environment variable for parent command line

Question

I need to set some environment variable by php and access them from windows cmd. From cmd I call php with call php\php.exe install.php 0 then install.php will set some environment variable. when execution of install.php is finished then I tried to get those variables from parent cmd. But cmd can not get those values.

here is my install.php :

<?php
$config = json_decode(file_get_contents('tmp/config.json'), true);
foreach ($config[$argv[1]] as $segment=>$details){
    putenv("targetFolder=$segment");
    putenv("targetLink=$details[link]");
}
echo getenv('targetFolder');

here is result:

%targetFolder% should return servers

Answer 1

With setenv, you able to set variables for the current process, and cmd.exe is the different, parent one. You cannot change the env of parent process without hacks. You probably should rewrite the script to put necessary set ENV=VALUE lines into some temporary batch file and then call it.

<?php
$config = json_decode(file_get_contents('tmp/config.json'), true);
$tmpBatch = fopen('tmp/setenv.bat', 'w');
foreach ($config[$argv[1]] as $segment=>$details){
    fwrite($tmpBatch, "set targetFolder=$segment");
    fwrite($tmpBatch, "set targetLink=$details[link]");
}
fclose($tmpBatch);

And then

php\php.exe install.php
call tmp\setenv.bat