Question

I’m trying to execute a Linux command from a webpage with node.js, socket.io and (I think…) PHP. I watched this YouTube video, and I’d like to do the same thing, but I don’t know how.

Could you give me an example?

Answer 1

The link to their implementation is available in the GitHub repo linked in the video – mirceageorgescu/raspi-tank.

---

node.js is perfectly capable of running programs. A draft could look like the following.

Server

var exec = require('child_process').exec;
io.sockets.on('connection', function(socket) {
  socket.on('exec', function(cmd) {
    exec(cmd, function(err, stdout, stderr) {
      // do something with the output or not
    });
  });
});

Client

socket.emit('exec', 'cat file.txt');

Information on how to start the socket on the server or connect to it from the client-side is available on socket.io.