How do you run a .bat file from PHP?

You might need to run it via cmd, eg:

system("cmd /c C:[path to file]");

This snippet is from working code.

You can trigger bat file not only from Windows GUI or Task Scheduler, but directly from PHP script when you need it. But in most cases it will have execution for 30-60 sec. depending from your PHP configuration. If job in BAT file is long and you don't want to freeze your PHP scripts, you need to fork BAT job as another process using php.exe and not be dependable from Apache.

This runs in background mode in Windows, seen as separate processes cmd.exe and php.exe from Task Manager not halting your Apache PHP scripts. The messages produced by your script may be stored and retrieved back via log files.

In my case in file_scanner.php I do some heavy calculations in loop for big array of files which may last for few hours with php function sleep() not to overload CPU.

The success poiner result from file $r which you can query via ajax if you want to know success or fauty start. In my case file_scanner.php writes log file with messages somefile.jpg - OK wich you can load to your UI with AJAX every few seconds to show progress.

PHP

/**
 * Runs bat file in background mode
 *
 */
 function run_scanner() {

    $c='start /b D:\Web\example.com\tasks\file_scanner.bat'; 
    $r=pclose(popen($c, 'r')); 
    return json_encode(array('result'=>$r));

 }

BAT

@echo Off
D:\PHP\php.exe D:\Web\example.com\tasks\file_scanner.php > D:\Web\example.com\tasks\file_scanner.log
exit

For anyone who needs to run a program in the background "without PHP waiting for it to finish" do this:

 pclose(popen("start /B ".$cmd, "r")); 

where $cmd is the string command for the program that you need to run (e.g. $cmd can equal notepad.exe or node Path\to\server.js).

Source: https://www.php.net/manual/en/function.exec.php (see Arno van den Brink's note in the section titled "User Contributed Notes").