Question

I m a begineer in php and having some problem as :

I have a php file having a function create_dump() in which I am dumping my postgresql database using pg_dump command.
Now while executing php file from linux terminal it asks for postgresql password on terminal.
I want to add error handling in my php file if user provides wrong password for the database unintentionally.

In other words :
How to catch pg_dump (postgresql command) execution error from my php file ?
Thanks !

Answer 1

Based on the info you provided I have a workaround for what you want to do. First, instead of piping the output of your dump using the ‘>’ you will need to use the –file=some_file.sql flag instead which does the same job.

Now, it does not appear that the $output from the passthru call will capture the output even if you send stderr to stdout so here’s what would work. You would modify the command using the –file= flag and pipe the output of the command (which contains the error) to a log file while making sure to also send stderr to stdout (do 2>&1 after the command) in order to capture the error.

Here’s the code:

// notice the file= flag and the piping of error to the file
$command=
    "/usr/bin/pg_dump --a --no-owner --no-acl --attribute-inserts ".
    "--disable-dollar-quoting --no-tablespaces ".
    "--file={$path['schema_path']}schema-{$latest_update}.sql ".
    "--host={$db['hostname']} --user={$db['username']} ".
    "--password --port={$db['port']} {$db['database']} > pg_dump_error.log 2>&1"; 

// no output to capture so no need to store it
passthru($command);

// read the file, if empty all's well
$error = file_get_contents('pg_dump_error.log');
if(trim($error) != '')
    exit("PG_DUMP ERRROR:\n-----\n$error\n");

Hope this is more or less what you were looking for.