Maintaining your Server with Command Line PHP

This article explores the power of PHP's command-line interface (CLI) for server maintenance. It highlights the advantages of using familiar PHP code for automation, reducing the need to learn new scripting languages. The article demonstrates how to verify your PHP CLI installation, execute scripts, and utilize helpful CLI options like -v (version), -s (syntax highlighting), and -l (syntax check). The interactive shell (-a) is also introduced as a tool for quick code testing.

The article details two crucial input methods: command-line arguments (accessed via $_SERVER["argc"] and $_SERVER["argv"]) and standard input (using fread(STDIN, ...)).

Two practical examples are provided:

1. Hard Drive Monitoring: A script that monitors disk usage and sends email alerts when a threshold is reached. This utilizes the exec() function to run system commands (df -h) and string manipulation to extract relevant data.

2. Backup Script: This script backs up files, folders, and a MySQL database, then transfers the compressed archive to a remote SFTP server. It leverages exec() for tasks like cp, tar, mysqldump, and utilizes the SSH2 extension for SFTP interaction. Remember to install the SSH2 extension if you haven't already.

The article concludes by emphasizing the versatility of PHP CLI for various system administration tasks, including file manipulation, process control, network communication, and database interaction.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs):

The FAQs section addresses common questions regarding PHP CLI, including installation on Windows, common command-line options, implementing website maintenance mode, supported PHP versions, updating PHP versions, running scripts from the command line, using PHP for system administration, handling command-line arguments, database interaction, and error handling within CLI scripts.

The above is the detailed content of Maintaining your Server with Command Line PHP. For more information, please follow other related articles on the PHP Chinese website!