Execute a PHP script from another PHP script

Question

How would I make my server run a php script by triggering it manually using php? Basically I have a pretty big cronjob file that is ran every 2 hours, but I want to be able to trigger the file manually myself without having to wait for it to load (i want it to be done on the server's side).

EDIT: I want to execute the file from a php file... Not command line.

Answer 1

You can invoke a PHP script manually from the command line

hello.php <?php  echo 'hello world!'; ?>  Command line: php hello.php  Output: hello world! 

See the documentation: http://php.net/manual/en/features.commandline.php

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EDIT OP edited the question to add a critical detail: the script is to be executed by another script.

There are a couple of approaches. First and easiest, you could simply include the file. When you include a file, the code within is "executed" (actually, interpreted). Any code that is not within a function or class body will be processed immediately. Take a look at the documentation for include (docs) and/or require (docs) (note: include_once and require_once are related, but different in an important way. Check out the documents to understand the difference) Your code would look like this:

 include('hello.php');  /* output  hello world!  */ 

Second and slightly more complex is to use shell_exec (docs). With shell_exec, you will call the php binary and pass the desired script as the argument. Your code would look like this:

$output = shell_exec('php hello.php'); echo "<pre>$output</pre>"; /* output hello world! */ 

Finally, and most complex, you could use the CURL library to call the file as though it were requested via a browser. Check out the CURL library documentation here: http://us2.php.net/manual/en/ref.curl.php

$ch = curl_init(); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, "http://www.myDomain.com/hello.php"); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true)  $output = curl_exec($ch); curl_close($ch); echo "<pre>$output</pre>"; /* output hello world! */ 

Documentation for functions used

• Command line: http://php.net/manual/en/features.commandline.php
• include: http://us2.php.net/manual/en/function.include.php
• require: http://us2.php.net/manual/en/function.require.php
• shell_exec: http://us2.php.net/manual/en/function.shell-exec.php
• curl_init: http://us2.php.net/manual/en/function.curl-init.php
• curl_setopt: http://us2.php.net/manual/en/function.curl-setopt.php
• curl_exec: http://us2.php.net/manual/en/function.curl-exec.php
• curl_close: http://us2.php.net/manual/en/function.curl-close.php

Answer 2

you can use the backtick notation:

`php file.php`; 

You can also put this at the top of the php file to indicate the interpreter:

#!/usr/bin/php 

Change it to where you put php. Then give execute permission on the file and you can call the file without specifying php:

`./file.php` 

If you want to capture the output of the script:

$output = `./file.php`; echo $output;