Question

I don’t know how I am going to achieve this, but…

I have a server-side, PHP CLI script. It will be run from the command-line. My PHP script needs to call a function in a JavaScript library and capture the return value. I need to find a way to run the JavaScript server-side. How can I achieve this?

Solution:

Using Rhino, you can run JavaScript as a command line script. First, download and extract Rhino. Then, assuming your scripts look like this:

PHP:

<?php
# myscript.php
$pathToRhinoJar = './rhino1_7R2/js.jar';
$javascriptFile = './test.js';
$output = shell_exec("java -jar $pathToRhinoJar $javascriptFile command line arguments");
echo "Response from javascript:\n $output";

JavaScript:

/* test.js */
for (i in arguments) {
  print(arguments[i])
}

This would be the result:

$ php ./myscript.php
Response from javascript:
command
line
arguments

Answer 1

Well technically you could do what you want.

• Find a command line JS interpreter, this might be a good starting point
• Make a JS script that accepts input and produces output
• Start doing whatever you are doing in php
• Throw a $output = system('./jsInterpreter -param value', $retval); or similar
• Do something with data

EDIT: Rhino seems to be a perfect match for your needs:

Predefined Properties

Scripts executing in the shell have access to some additional properties of the top-level object.
arguments

The arguments object is an array containing the strings of all the arguments given at the command line when the shell was invoked.