How do I write a command-line interactive PHP script?

Question

I want to write a PHP script that I can use from the command line. I want it to prompt and accept input for a few items, and then spit out some results. I want to do this in PHP, because all my classes and libraries are in PHP, and I just want to make a simple command line interface to a few things.

The prompting and accepting repeated command line inputs is the part that's tripping me up. How do I do this?

Answer 1

The I/O Streams page from the PHP manual describes how you can use STDIN to read a line from the command line:

<?php
 $line = trim(fgets(STDIN)); // reads one line from STDIN
 fscanf(STDIN, "%d\n", $number); // reads number from STDIN
?>

Answer 2

From PHP: Read from Keyboard – Get User Input from Keyboard Console by Typing :

You need a special file: php://stdin which stands for the standard input.

print "Type your message. Type '.' on a line by itself when you're done.\n";

$fp = fopen('php://stdin', 'r');
$last_line = false;
$message = '';
while (!$last_line) {
    $next_line = fgets($fp, 1024); // read the special file to get the user input from keyboard
    if (".\n" == $next_line) {
      $last_line = true;
    } else {
      $message .= $next_line;
    }
}

Answer 3

I'm not sure how complex your input might be, but readline is an excellent way to handle it for interactive CLI programs.

You get the same creature comforts out of it that you would expect from your shell, such as command history.

Using it is as simple as:

$command = readline("Enter Command: ");
/* Then add the input to the command history */
readline_add_history($command);

If available , it really does make it simple.

---

Here a typical do-case-while for console implementation:

do {
  $cmd = trim(strtolower( readline("\n> Command: ") ));
  readline_add_history($cmd);
  switch ($cmd) {
    case 'hello': print "\n -- HELLO!\n"; break;
    case 'bye': break;
    default: print "\n -- You say '$cmd'... say 'bye' or 'hello'.\n";
  }
} while ($cmd!='bye');

where user can use arrows (up and down) to access the history.

Answer 4

I found an example on PHP.net, Utiliser PHP en ligne de commande :

$handle = fopen("php://stdin", "r");
$line = fgets($handle);
if (trim($line) != 'yes') {
...

Answer 5

One line of code (line 2):

<?php
    $name = trim(shell_exec("read -p 'Enter your name: ' name\necho \$name"));
    echo "Hello $name, this is PHP speaking\n";
    exit;

Checkout this answer's source in blog post How can I capture user input from the cmd line using PHP? .

Answer 6

Simple:

#!/usr/bin/php
<?php
define('CONFIRMED_NO', 1);

while (1) {
    fputs(STDOUT, "\n"."***WARNING***: This action causes permanent data deletion.\nAre you sure you're not going to wine about it later? [y,n]: ");

    $response = strtolower(trim(fgets(STDIN)));
    if( $response == 'y' ) {
        break;
    } elseif( $response == 'n' ) {
        echo "\n",'So I guess you changed your mind eh?', "\n";
        exit (CONFIRMED_NO);
    } else {
        echo "\n", "Dude, that's not an option you idiot. Let's try this again.", "\n";
        continue;
    }
}

echo "\n","You're very brave. Let's continue with what we wanted to do.", "\n\n";

Answer 7

My five cents: Using STDOUT and STDIN :

fwrite(STDOUT, "Please enter your Message (enter 'quit' to leave):\n");

do{
    do{
        $message = trim(fgets(STDIN));
    } while($message == '');

    if(strcasecmp($message, 'quit') != 0){
        fwrite(STDOUT, "Your message: ".$message."\n");
    }

}while(strcasecmp($message,'quit') != 0);
// Exit correctly
exit(0);

Answer 8

The algorithm is simple:

until done:
    display prompt
    line := read a command line of input
    handle line

It's very trivial to use an array that maps commands to callback functions that handle them. The entire challenge is roughly a while loop, and two function calls. PHP also has a readline interface for more advanced shell applications.

Answer 9

Basically you read from standard input. See Input/output streams .