PHP CLI Tips and Tricks
PHPWomen Contest Winner
ByPHPWomen.org recently held an article-writing contest on their Best Practices Forum. Authors of the two winning submissions each received copies of Zend Studio for Eclipse, a 1-year subscription to Linux Pro Magazine (which is called Linux Magazine outside North America), and the opportunity to feature their articles on the magazine websites. Congratulations goes to Gerard Sychay for his winning submission!
It's not called the Command Line Interface for nothing. I programmed in PHP for a long time without even looking at the PHP CLI. When I finally did, I started appreciating all of its usefulness and features. Now I'd say I use it almost every day.
In this article, I'll show you three quick tips that can boost your PHP development productivity. Let's dive right in:
`php -r`
Did you know you can execute a line of PHP with the -r option? Use it like this:
% php -r 'echo "Hello world!\n";'
Hello world!
Note that everything inside the single apostrophes must be valid PHP syntax, so mind your double quotes and semi-colons. This has a number of uses. For example, how about some quick math?
% php -r 'echo sqrt(150)."\n";'
12.247448713916
Or finding out what week of the year we're in?
%$ php -r 'echo date("W") . "\n";'
26
Or finding out what day of the week Independence Day in the U.S. falls on next year?
% php -r 'echo date("l", strtotime("2009-07-04")) . "\n";'
Saturday
Or generating a random number for the office raffle?
% php -r 'echo rand(0, 100) . "\n";'
33
Sometimes, I just need a bunch of random letters and numbers. I find a random md5 hash usually does the trick:
% php -r 'echo md5(uniqid(rand(), true)) . "\n";'
faa5f6cd713bcfb64aa0b297d62c5345
You get the idea.
PHP Interactive Shell
I don’t know whether it’s really a shell, but it gets the job done. Have you ever wanted to test a small snippet of PHP code? You might have a small test script somewhere under a web server root you can quickly access. It’s a pain. With interactive PHP, you can test these right from the command line!
% php -a
Interactive mode enabled
<?php
echo "hello world!\n";
hello world!
exit;
%
This is great for figuring out little problems or little snippets of code while developing. For example, I can never remember where the $haystack and where the $needle go in assorted string functions:
% php -a
Interactive mode enabled
<?php
// does the $needle or $haystack come first?
echo strpos("lo", "hello");
echo strpos("hello", "lo");
3
// so the $haystack comes first
Or how about figuring out that regular expression you need?
% php -a
Interactive mode enabled
<?php
// get rid of all characters but "abc"
$regex = "/^[abc]/";
echo preg_replace($regex, "", "abcdef");
bcdef
// oops, that gets rid of [abc] occurring at the line beginning
// let's try again
$regex = "/[^abc]/";
echo preg_replace($regex, "", "abcdef");
abc
// that's what I wanted
PHP Command Interpreter
This isn't really a command-line tip, but you might it useful if you are on Unix. You know you can execute a PHP script by running php myscript.php, but did you know you don't even need the php command?
When Unix runs a script, it looks for a command interpreter to interpret the script at the very top of the file. The command interpreter line begins with the shebang string (#!). You probably have done this with shell scripts, but you can do it with PHP scripts as well. So, if you have a PHP script named myscript.php that looks like this:
#!/usr/bin/php
<?php
echo "Hello world again!\n";
?>
You can run this script by running the file name:
% ./myscript.php
Hello world again!
(Make sure the file is executable.) So if you have an awesome PHP script that does some task for you, or a PHP script that deploys your site, you can put the script in your $PATH and simply call it like any other Unix command.
That's about it. There are a few other PHP CLI features you might find useful. For example, php -l will run a syntax check on PHP code, and php -i will give you output similar to the phpinfo() function.
Are there any other interesting ways you've used the PHP CLI?
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you've found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
Red Hat Migrates RHEL from Xorg to Wayland
If you've been wondering when Xorg will finally be a thing of the past, wonder no more, as Red Hat has made it clear.
-
PipeWire 1.0 Officially Released
PipeWire was created to take the place of the oft-troubled PulseAudio and has finally reached the 1.0 status as a major update with plenty of improvements and the usual bug fixes.
-
Rocky Linux 9.3 Available for Download
The latest version of the RHEL alternative is now available and brings back cloud and container images for ppc64le along with plenty of new features and fixes.
-
Ubuntu Budgie Shifts How to Tackle Wayland
Ubuntu Budgie has yet to make the switch to Wayland but with a change in approaches, they're finally on track to making it happen.
-
TUXEDO's New Ultraportable Linux Workstation Released
The TUXEDO Pulse 14 blends portability with power, thanks to the AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS CPU.
-
AlmaLinux Will No Longer Be "Just Another RHEL Clone"
With the release of AlmaLinux 9.3, the distribution will be built entirely from upstream sources.
-
elementary OS 8 Has a Big Surprise in Store
When elementary OS 8 finally arrives, it will not only be based on Ubuntu 24.04 but it will also default to Wayland for better performance and security.
-
OpenELA Releases Enterprise Linux Source Code
With Red Hat restricting the source for RHEL, it was only a matter of time before those who depended on that source struck out on their own.
-
StripedFly Malware Hiding in Plain Sight as a Cryptocurrency Miner
A rather deceptive piece of malware has infected 1 million Windows and Linux hosts since 2017.
-
Experimental Wayland Support Planned for Linux Mint 21.3
As with most Linux distributions, the migration to Wayland is in full force. While some distributions have already made the move, Linux Mint has been a bit slower to do so.