Pass a variable to a PHP script running from the command line

Using the getopt() function, we can also read a parameter from the command line. Just pass a value with the php running command:

php abc.php --name=xyz

File abc.php

$val = getopt(null, ["name:"]);
print_r($val); // Output: ['name' => 'xyz'];

You could use what sep16 on php.net recommends:

<?php

parse_str(implode('&', array_slice($argv, 1)), $_GET);

?>

It behaves exactly like you'd expect with cgi-php.

$ php -f myfile.php type=daily a=1 b[]=2 b[]=3

will set $_GET['type'] to 'daily', $_GET['a'] to '1' and $_GET['b'] to array('2', '3').

Just pass it as parameters as follows:

php test.php one two three

And inside file test.php:

<?php
    if(isset($argv))
    {
        foreach ($argv as $arg)
        {
            echo $arg;
            echo "\r\n";
        }
    }
?>

There are four main alternatives. Both have their quirks, but Method 4 has many advantages from my view.

./script is a shell script starting by #!/usr/bin/php

Method 1: $argv

./script hello wo8844rld
// $argv[0] = "script", $argv[1] = "hello", $argv[2] = "wo8844rld"

⚠️ Using $argv, the parameter order is critical.

Method 2: getopt()

./script -p7 -e3
// getopt("p::")["p"] = "7", getopt("e::")["e"] = "3"

It's hard to use in conjunction of $argv, because:

⚠️ The parsing of options will end at the first non-option found, anything that follows is discarded.

⚠️ Only 26 parameters as the alphabet.

Method 3: Bash Global variable

P9="xptdr" ./script
// getenv("P9") = "xptdr"
// $_SERVER["P9"] = "xptdr"

Those variables can be used by other programs running in the same shell.

They are blown when the shell is closed, but not when the PHP program is terminated. We can set them permanent in file ~/.bashrc!

Method 4: STDIN pipe and stream_get_contents()

Some piping examples:

Feed a string:

./script <<< "hello wo8844rld"
// stream_get_contents(STDIN) = "hello wo8844rld"

Feed a string using bash echo:

echo "hello wo8844rld" | ./script
// explode(" ",stream_get_contents(STDIN)) ...

Feed a file content:

./script < ~/folder/Special_params.txt
// explode("\n",stream_get_contents(STDIN)) ...

Feed an array of values:

./script <<< '["array entry","lol"]'
// var_dump( json_decode(trim(stream_get_contents(STDIN))) );

Feed JSON content from a file:

echo params.json | ./script
// json_decode(stream_get_contents(STDIN)) ...

It might work similarly to fread() or fgets(), by reading the STDIN.

Bash-Scripting Guide

I found this vanilla/garden-cli on github. I think it answers all the needs for PHP CLI.

To bypass the complexity of passing to the file, it sounds like you could use sed to insert the line directly into the php file.

sed -i "i (backslash)type=daily myfile.php

or as I use it with variables:

sed -i "i (backslash)$type = "(backslash)"${daily}(backslash)"(backslash); ${path}"/myfile.php"