how to invoke external php script ?

[konsu]

hello,

when a web request comes to my index.php, i would like index.php to execute
a php script stored in an external file and capture the external script's
output to a variable.

i am doing this because the external script can read the database and can
emit xml that i want to use. index.php (or whatever) wants to grab this xml
and pass it through an xslt.

i know that if the external php script had a function declared, and the
function returned a string value with the xml contents, then i could use
"require" or a similar construct and call the function. the question that i
am trying to answer is what to do if the external script uses echo() to
output the results? how to capture its output during request processing?
besides, i do not like spawning another process for that and piping to it.
it might not scale well. ;-)

please help.
thanks
konstantin

[Jamie Davison]

Use the -q directive to suppress headers

In index.php:
$stdout_var = shell_exec(/usr/local/bin/php -q /path/to/the/php/file.php);

Make sure file.php is chmod 755 or thereof

Check the path to php (could be "sbin")

You could write $stdout_var to file or do whatever from here.

On 2/25/05 1:25 PM, in article e-*************** *****@kallback. com, "konsu"
<ko***@hotmail. com> wrote:

hello,

when a web request comes to my index.php, i would like index.php to execute
a php script stored in an external file and capture the external script's
output to a variable.

i am doing this because the external script can read the database and can
emit xml that i want to use. index.php (or whatever) wants to grab this xml
and pass it through an xslt.

i know that if the external php script had a function declared, and the
function returned a string value with the xml contents, then i could use
"require" or a similar construct and call the function. the question that i
am trying to answer is what to do if the external script uses echo() to
output the results? how to capture its output during request processing?
besides, i do not like spawning another process for that and piping to it.
it might not scale well. ;-)

please help.
thanks
konstantin

[Google Mike]

Another route is:

$sResponse = `php -q -d max_execution_t ime=60000
/path/to/php/file.php`;

In this example, I also add the "-d max_execution_t ime=60000" so that
your external script has a longer timeout time, in case you need that.

Note the backticks (`) in the code above -- these are not single
quotes.

I also don't do a direct path to PHP. If your $PATH already contains
the PHP bin path, then you might not need it.

Also, on my system, PHP is reached with /usr/bin/php instead of
/usr/local/bin/php. (I have RH9 Linux.)

[NC]

konsu wrote:

when a web request comes to my index.php, i would like index.php
to execute a php script stored in an external file and capture
the external script's output to a variable.

Is that script located on your system or somewhere else? If it
is local, (i.e., resides on your system), you can simply do
soomething like this:

$capture = file_get_conten ts('http://localhost/script.php');

If the external script is remote, you can do

$capture = file_get_conten ts('http://www.example.com/script.php');

Cheers,
NC