Introduction

PHP is traditionally only used on the internet to power our websites, but it's also capable of doing more. Since version 4.3 PHP ships with a special version which can be used to execute scripts on the command line, and do certain system tasks. If you're a Linux user, you probably know what the command line is, but if you're a Windows user you might not.

The command line is used to directly execute certain system commands. To access the command line on Windows XP, go to Start -> Run, and then type 'cmd.exe'. A new DOS prompt will pop-up, and a line will be blinking after C:\Windows. Something like this:

This is the command line, and you can now enter commands to do certain things. But it's also possible to execute PHP scripts with the PHP command line engine, called PHP CLI.

In this tutorial I will show you how to use the PHP CLI, its features, and what it can be used for. Let's get started with the most basic thing: how to use PHP CLI.

How to use PHP CLI

To run a PHP script on the command line in Linux you have to CHMOD the PHP script executable ("chmod +x script.php") and it can then be used just like a program. Simply click the script, and it will run on the command line.

In Windows however it's a bit trickier. To run a PHP script on the command line, first open the command prompt (Start -> Run, 'cmd.exe'). Then browse to the directory in which your script is located using standard DOS commands. For example, if my script is located in C:\myscripts, I'd type the following

When you're in the correct directory, first enter the location to your CLI php.exe (usually C:\PHP\CLI\php.exe), then a space, and then your script name, e.g.

Then hit enter to run your script on the command line.

Let's try it with a simple Hello World example:

Note the first line in the above example. This is called a shebang, and is only useful for Linux, as it tells the command line interpreter where to find the PHP executable (make sure it's correct), and it's ignored by Windows.

If you run the above example, you will get the following result:

As you can see it prints the 'Hello World', but also two other lines before that. These are standard headers sent out by PHP when it's used normally, but they're completely useless now. This is no problem though, as it's fairly simple to hide them. For Linux users, you have to change the shebang to:

And Windows users have to use the -q as an argument, like so:

That's it for the basic use of PHP CLI scripts, so let's have a look at a special CLI feature: arguments.

This article was posted on Monday, March 13th, 2006 at 12:58 am. You can follow any responses to this article through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.