betz Mon May 6 06:43:56 2002 EDT
Added files:
/phpdoc/en/features commandline.xml
Log:
moved commandline to chapters/features
id correction in commandline.xml for chapters/features
Index: phpdoc/en/features/commandline.xml
+++ phpdoc/en/features/commandline.xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>
<!-- $Revision: 1.1 $ -->
<!--
TODO:
The command line options not in the
list, but in the -h output below:
-e, -z
It would be best to document these, and
collect more info about -c and -d!
-->
<chapter id="features.commandline">
<title>Using PHP from the command line</title>
<para>
The command line options of the PHP executable are useful
if you would like to debug or test your PHP setup, but they
can also be handy, if you would like to use PHP for a
different purpose than web scripting.
</para>
<para>
Note, that you can always direct the output of the PHP
executable to an external file with the > character,
so <literal>php -q test.php > test.html</literal> will
print out the output of <filename>test.php</filename>
without HTTP headers to the <filename>test.html</filename>
file in the same directory.
</para>
<para>
You can only use these command line options if you have
the PHP executable. If you built the server module
version, and you have no CGI version available on your
machine, than you have no chance to use these options.
For Windows users both the PHP executable and the server
modules are in the binary package, the executable is
named <filename>php.exe</filename>.
</para>
<para>
This list of command line options is consistent with PHP 4.0.6.
You can get the actual list and some one line descriptions
with the <literal>-h</literal> option. The output of
<literal>php -h</literal> should be something like this:
<screen>
<![CDATA[
Usage: php [-q] [-h] [-s [-v] [-i] [-f <file>] | {<file> [args...]}
-q Quiet-mode. Suppress HTTP Header output.
-s Display colour syntax highlighted source.
-f <file> Parse <file>. Implies `-q'
-v Version number
-C Do not chdir to the script's directory
-c <path> Look for php.ini file in this directory
-d foo[=bar] Define INI entry foo with value 'bar'
-e Generate extended information for debugger/profiler
-z <file> Load Zend extension <file>.
-l Syntax check only (lint)
-m Show compiled in modules
-i PHP information
-h This help
]]>
</screen>
</para>
<para>
Here we list some of the most important command line options
with detailed explanations.
</para>
<para>
<table>
<title>Command line options</title>
<tgroup cols="2">
<thead>
<row>
<entry>Option</entry>
<entry>Description</entry>
</row>
</thead>
<tbody>
<row>
<entry>-q</entry>
<entry>
Suppress HTTP headers output. Normally PHP prints out
HTTP headers for the calling program (ie. webserver)
to hand on to the browser. When writing command line
applications these headers are useless.
</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry>-s</entry>
<entry>
Display the color highlighted source of the file
given with its name. This is the same as if you were
printing out the source using the
<function>highlight_file</function> function in
a PHP script.
</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry>-f</entry>
<entry>
Parse the file given, and search for syntactical and
fatal errors. This option implies -q. Use for
debugging purposes.
</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry>-v</entry>
<entry>
By calling PHP with this option, you can ask
it to print out its version number, ie: 4.0.6.
</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry>-C</entry>
<entry>
Normally PHP changes the working directory to the
running scripts directory. This makes it possible
for example, to open files in the same directory,
with only specifying the name of the file. If you
would like to disable this directory change, use
this option.
</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry>-c</entry>
<entry>
Using this option, you can specify an alternative
&php.ini; path, so PHP will
search your configurations file in this path
instead of the default one.
</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry>-d</entry>
<entry>
With this option, you can set individual
&php.ini; settings in the
time of running a script.
</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry>-l</entry>
<entry>
Check the file given for syntax errors. This
option implies -q. Use for debugging purposes.
This option won't find fatal errors (like undefined
functions). Use -f if you would like to test
for fatal errors too.
</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry>-m</entry>
<entry>
Using this option, PHP prints out the built in
(and loaded) PHP and Zend modules, the PHP
and Zend version numbers, and a short Zend
copyright notice.
</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry>-i</entry>
<entry>
This command line option calls
<function>phpinfo</function>, and prints
out the results. If PHP is not working well,
it is advisable to make a <literal>php -i</literal>
and see if any error messages are printed out
before or in place of the information tables.
</entry>
</row>
<row>
<entry>-h</entry>
<entry>
With this option, you can get information about
the actual list of command line options and some
one line descriptions about what they do.
</entry>
</row>
</tbody>
</tgroup>
</table>
</para>
<para>
The PHP executable can be used to run PHP scripts absolutely
independent from the web server. If you are on a Unix system,
you should add a special first line to your PHP script, and
make it executable, so the system will know, what program
should run the script. On a Windows platform you can associate
<literal>php.exe -q</literal> with the double click option of
the <literal>.php</literal> files, or you can make a batch file
to run the script through PHP. The first line added to the
script to work on Unix won't hurt on Windows, so you can write
cross platform programs this way. A simple example of writing
a command line PHP program can be found below.
</para>
<example>
<title>Script intended to be run from command line (script.php)</title>
<programlisting role="php">
<![CDATA[
#!/usr/bin/php -q
<?php
if ($argc != 2 || in_array($argv[1], array('--help', '-help', '-h', '-?'))) {
?>
This is a command line PHP script with one option.
Usage:
<?php echo $argv[0]; ?> <option>
<option> can be some word you would like
to print out. With the --help, -help, -h,
or -? options, you can get this help.
<?php
} else {
echo $argv[1];
}
?>
]]>
</programlisting>
</example>
<para>
In the script above, we used the special first line to indicate,
that this file should be run by PHP and should not print out HTTP
headers. There are two variables you can use while writing command
line applications with PHP: <varname>$argc</varname> and
<varname>$argv</varname>. The first is the number of arguments plus
one (the name of the script running). The second is an array
containing the arguments, starting with the script name as number
zero (<varname>$argv[0]</varname>).
</para>
<para>
In the program above we checked if there are less or more than one
arguments. Also if the argument was <literal>--help</literal>,
<literal>-help</literal>, <literal>-h</literal> or <literal>-?</literal>,
we printed out the help message, printing the script name dynamically.
If we received some other argument we echoed that out.
</para>
<para>
If you would like to run the above script on Unix, you need to
make it executable, and simply call it as
<literal>script.php echothis</literal> or
<literal>script.php -h</literal>. On Windows, you can make a
batch file for this task:
</para>
<example>
<title>Batch file to run a command line PHP script (script.bat)</title>
<programlisting role="winbat">
@c:\php\php.exe -q script.php %1 %2 %3 %4
</programlisting>
</example>
<para>
Assuming, you named the above program as
<filename>script.php</filename>, and you have your
<filename>php.exe</filename> in
<filename>c:\php\php.exe</filename> this batch file
will run it for you with your added options:
<literal>script.bat echothis</literal> or
<literal>script.bat -h</literal>.
</para>
<para>
See also the <link linkend="ref.readline">Readline</link>
extension documentation for more functions you can use
to enhance your command line applications in PHP.
</para>
</chapter>
<!-- Keep this comment at the end of the file
Local variables:
mode: sgml
sgml-omittag:t
sgml-shorttag:t
sgml-minimize-attributes:nil
sgml-always-quote-attributes:t
sgml-indent-step:1
sgml-indent-data:t
indent-tabs-mode:nil
sgml-parent-document:nil
sgml-default-dtd-file:"../../manual.ced"
sgml-exposed-tags:nil
sgml-local-catalogs:nil
sgml-local-ecat-files:nil
End:
vim600: syn=xml fen fdm=syntax fdl=2 si
vim: et tw=78 syn=sgml
vi: ts=1 sw=1
-->
