Question

I’m trying to execute a command (in both Windows and Linux) via PHP. My target is to have multiple instances of the command running at the same time (hence background) but I need to grab the output of each also.

This doesn’t work as the output cannot be grabbed.

function execInBackground($cmd) { 
    if (substr(php_uname(), 0, 7) == "Windows"){ 
        pclose(popen("start /B ". $cmd, "r"));  
    } 
    else { 
        exec($cmd . " > /dev/null &");   
    } 
}

Will forking help me? I saw PHP exec in background using & is not working too but again where to get the output?

Any ideas would be great!

EDIT: We are using PHP v5.2, other PHP versions cannot be used!

Answer 1

Exec the command with & and output to a file:

exec($cmd . " > output".$NumberOfInstance.".txt &"); 

After that you can read contents when its done.

exec($cmd . " > output".$NumberOfInstance.".txt ; php phpscriptwhereyouchecktheoutputfilewithaverylongname.php&"); 

Try this for executing a PHP script AFTER the first command was ended, using the ; between instructions.