piping data into command line php? - php

Question

It is possible to pipe data using unix pipes into a command-line php script? I've tried
$> data | php script.php
But the expected data did not show up in $argv. Is there a way to do this?

Answer 1

PHP can read from standard input, and also provides a nice shortcut for it: STDIN.
With it, you can use things like stream_get_contents and others to do things like:
$data = stream_get_contents(STDIN);
This will just dump all the piped data into $data.
If you want to start processing before all data is read, or the input size is too big to fit into a variable, you can use:
while(!feof(STDIN)){
$line = fgets(STDIN);
}
STDIN is just a shortcut of $fh = fopen("php://stdin", "r");.
The same methods can be applied to reading and writing files, and tcp streams.

Answer 2

As I understand it, $argv will show the arguments of the program, in other words:
php script.php arg1 arg2 arg3
But if you pipe data into PHP, you will have to read it from standard input. I've never tried this, but I think it's something like this:
$fp = readfile("php://stdin");
// read $fp as if it were a file

Answer 3

If your data is on one like, you can also use either the -F or -R flag (-F reads & executes the file following it, -R executes it literally) If you use these flags the string that has been piped in will appear in the (regular) global variable $argn
Simple example:
echo "hello world" | php -R 'echo str_replace("world","stackoverflow", $argn);'

Answer 4

You can pipe data in, yes. But it won't appear in $argv. It'll go to stdin. You can read this several ways, including fopen('php://stdin','r')
There are good examples in the manual

Answer 5

This worked for me:
stream_get_contents(fopen("php://stdin", "r"));

Answer 6

Came upon this post looking to make a script that behaves like a shell script, executing another command for each line of the input... ex:
ls -ln | awk '{print $9}'
If you're looking to make a php script that behaves in a similar way, this worked for me:
#!/usr/bin/php
<?php
$input = stream_get_contents(fopen("php://stdin", "r"));
$lines = explode("\n", $input);
foreach($lines as $line) {
$command = "php next_script.php '" . $line . "'";
$output = shell_exec($command);
echo $output;
}

Answer 7

If you want it to show up in $argv, try this:
echo "Whatever you want" | xargs php script.php
That would covert whatever goes into standard input into command line arguments.

Answer 8

Best option is to use -r option and take the data from the stdin. Ie I use it to easily decode JSON using PHP.
This way you don't have to create physical script file.
It goes like this:
docker inspect $1|php -r '$a=json_decode(stream_get_contents(STDIN),true);echo str_replace(["Array",":"],["Shares"," --> "],print_r($a[0]["HostConfig"]["Binds"],true));'
This piece of code will display shared folders between host & a container.
Please replace $1 by the container name or put it in a bash alias like ie displayshares() { ... }

Answer 9

I needed to take a CSV file and convert it to a TSV file. Sure, I could import the file into Excel and then re-export it, but where's the fun in that when piping the data through a converter means I can stay in the commandline and get the job done easily!
So, my script (called csv2tsv) is
#!/usr/bin/php
<?php
while(!feof(STDIN)){
echo implode("\t", str_getcsv(fgets(STDIN))), PHP_EOL;
}
I chmod +x csv2tsv.
I can then run it cat data.csv | csv2tsv > data.tsv and I now have my data as a TSV!
OK. No error checking (is the data an actual CSV file?), etc. but the principle works well.
And of course, you can chain as many commands as you need.
If you are wanting more to expand on this idea, then how about the ability to include additional options to your command?
Simple!
#!/usr/bin/php
<?php
$separator = $argv[1] ?? "\t";
while(!feof(STDIN)){
echo implode($separator, str_getcsv(fgets(STDIN))), PHP_EOL;
}
Now I can overwrite the default separator from being a tab to something else. A | maybe!
cat data.csv | csv2tsv '|' > data.psv
Hope this helps and allows you to see how much more you can do!