Unable to make a MySQL connection through Perl when called in a PHP script

Question

I'm creating a connection to a MySQL database within a Perl script, called by a PHP script. Here are the 2 scripts:

Perl:

#!/usr/bin/perl
# script name = MyCode.pl
use DBI;
my $data_source = q/dbi:mysql:name:localhost/;
my $user = q/myname/;
my $pwd = q/pword/;

print "before...\n";
# Connect!
$dbhandle= DBI->connect($data_source,$user,$pwd) or die "can't connect
       $data_source: $DBI::errstr \n";
print "...after \n";

PHP:

<?php
 // script name = Test.php
 $myResult=shell_exec("perl /path/MyCode.pl");
 echo $myResult;
?>

---

When executed on the command line, Test.php prints "before..." and "...after" and the DB connection is indeed established within the Perl code. However, when Test.php is executed from my (Chrome) browser, all that prints is "before..." and no connection is made. And no error message is displayed.

Why is there success on the command line but not from a web server?

Answer 1

Yes, PHP shell_exec() function doesn't capture STDERR.

To debug your code, you can add a 2>&1 at the end of system command to redirect STDERR to STDOUT:

$myResult = shell_exec("perl /path/script.pl 2>&1");

Also, you can setup the DBI module to die if some error occurs at runtime:

$dbh = DBI->connect($data_source,$user, $pwd, { RaiseError => 1, PrintError => 0}) or die $DBI::errstr;

Answer 2

Problem fixed...I needed correct path specification: this is done (on godaddy) by using:

use cPanelUserConfig;

in the Perl script to access the DBD::mysql module that I installed.