Laravel 5.1: Changing PHP version used by Artisan Facade - php

Question

I have an application that will run an Artisan command via a controller:
Artisan::call('myCommand');
The problem is that my production server doesn't have their Terminal PHP version up to speed, so they needed to put in a fix for my running of composer and artisan commands ( I now use /usr/bin/php55 ).
Now, when I try to to call the Artisan command via my controller, I am getting this error:
Parse error: syntax error, unexpected 'class' (T_CLASS), expecting identifier (T_STRING) or variable (T_VARIABLE) or '{' or '$' in on line 54
This error is due to the PHP version being wrong, which agrees with previous issues I have had on my production server.
Does anyone know how I can change the version of PHP used by the Artisan Facade? Preferably without changing any core Laravel code :)
Thanks

Answer 1

When you run a command via Artisan::call() you are not creating a separate process. The command code is executed with the same process that handles the request and uses the same PHP version. There is no way to make it use another PHP version when calling it via Artisan facade.
In order to use different PHP version you need to run the command in a separate process. You can use Symfony's Process class for that - it's bundled with Laravel, so there is no need to install anything.
This should work for you:
$process = new Process('/usr/bin/php55 artisan command:name');
$process->run();