Question

I am building a way of importing .SQL files into a MySQL database from PHP. This is used for executing batches of queries. The issue I am having is error reporting.

$command = "mysql -u $dbuser --password='$dbpassword' --host='$sqlhost' $dbname < $file";
exec($command, $output);

This is essentially how I am importing my .sql file into my database. The issue is that I have no way of knowing if any errors occurred within the PHP script executing this command. Successful imports are entirely indistinguishable from a failure.

I have tried:

• Using PHP’s sql error reporting functions.
• Adding the verbose argument to the command and examining the output. It simply returns the contents of the .sql file and that is all.
• Setting errors to a user variable within the .sql file and querying it from the PHP script.

I hope I am not forced to write the errors into a temporary table. Is there a better way?

UPDATE:
If possible, it would be very preferable if I could determine WHAT errors occurred, not simply IF one occurred.

Answer 1

Try using shell_exec

$output = shell_exec( "mysql -u $dbuser --password='$dbpassword' --host='$sqlhost' $dbname < $file" );
// parse $output here for errors

From the manual:

shell_exec — Execute command via shell and return the complete output as a string

Note:

This function is disabled when PHP is running in safe mode.

EDIT: Full solution:

what you need to do is grab STDERR and discard STDOUT. Do this by adding ‘2>&1 1> /dev/null’ to the end of your command.

$output = shell_exec( "mysql -u $dbuser --password='$dbpassword' --host='$sqlhost' $dbname < $file 2>&1 1> /dev/null" );
$lines = explode( PHP_EOL, $output );

$errors = array();

foreach( $lines as $line )
{
    if ( strtolower( substr( $line, 0, 5 ) ) == 'error' )
    {
        $errors[] = $line;
    }
}

if ( count( $errors ) )
{
    echo PHP_EOL . 'Errors occurred during import.';
    echo implode( PHP_EOL, $errors );
}
else
{
    echo 'No Errors' . PHP_EOL;
}