Question

For a school project, I’ve written a webapp to take a picture (using a camera) and do some analysis on it. There is a tool I downloaded called DIYPhotoBits (capture.hta) which remotely fires the camera shutter, and I am trying to start it with php. The problem is, NONE of the below commands work. The server just hangs like it’s waiting. Error logs reveal nothing. If I enter the path that is below into Windows Explorer, the program runs just fine.

Does anyone know why? Thank you so much.

popen('C:/Users/Nick/Documents/Webpages/microplate/executables/capture.hta', 'r');
exec('C:/Users/Nick/Documents/Webpages/microplate/executables/capture.hta');
system('C:/Users/Nick/Documents/Webpages/microplate/executables/capture.hta');
passthru('C:/Users/Nick/Documents/Webpages/microplate/executables/capture.hta');

Answer 1

Try the shell_exec() function or the backtick operators (“)