Question

I’m curios if Zend has a component which can make use of the shell. For example I want to do an shell command like this:

mysqldump --compact --uroot --ppass mydatabase mydable >test.sql

from a controller.

If there isn’t, do you know a way how to dump data from tables in Zend Framework?

update:
I’ve found a way here http://www.zfsnippets.com/snippets/view/id/68

Answer 1

There’s no direct exec() support in the zend framework. the closest to command line support there is the Zend_Console class, but it’s meant for getting arguments from the command line.

I would wrap the exec() function as a process object and work with that. Here’s a nice example from the php docs:

<?php
    // You may use status(), start(), and stop(). notice that start() method gets called automatically one time.
    $process = new Process('ls -al');

    // or if you got the pid, however here only the status() metod will work.
    $process = new Process();
    $process.setPid(my_pid);
?>

<?php
    // Then you can start/stop/ check status of the job.
    $process.stop();
    $process.start();
    if ($process.status()){
        echo "The process is currently running";
    }else{
        echo "The process is not running.";
    }
?>

<?php
/* An easy way to keep in track of external processes.
 * Ever wanted to execute a process in php, but you still wanted to have somewhat controll of the process ? Well.. This is a way of doing it.
 * @compability: Linux only. (Windows does not work).
 * @author: Peec
 */
class Process{
    private $pid;
    private $command;

    public function __construct($cl=false){
        if ($cl != false){
            $this->command = $cl;
            $this->runCom();
        }
    }
    private function runCom(){
        $command = 'nohup '.$this->command.' > /dev/null 2>&1 & echo $!';
        exec($command ,$op);
        $this->pid = (int)$op[0];
    }

    public function setPid($pid){
        $this->pid = $pid;
    }

    public function getPid(){
        return $this->pid;
    }

    public function status(){
        $command = 'ps -p '.$this->pid;
        exec($command,$op);
        if (!isset($op[1]))return false;
        else return true;
    }

    public function start(){
        if ($this->command != '')$this->runCom();
        else return true;
    }

    public function stop(){
        $command = 'kill '.$this->pid;
        exec($command);
        if ($this->status() == false)return true;
        else return false;
    }
}
?>

It’s also let you stop and check the status of a job.