Asynchronous shell exec in PHP

Question

I ve got a PHP script that needs to invoke a shell script but doesn t care at all about the output  The shell script makes a number of SOAP calls and is slow to complete  so I don t want to slow down the PHP request while it waits for a reply  In fact  the PHP request should be able to exit without terminating the shell process   I ve looked into the various exec    shell exec    pcntl fork    etc  functions  but none of them seem to offer exactly what I want   Or  if they do  it s not clear to me how   Any suggestions

User · Answer

the right way    to do it is to    fork   setsid   execve     fork forks  setsid tell the current process to become a master one  no parent   execve tell the calling process to be replaced by the called one  so that the parent can quit without affecting the child     pid pcntl fork     if  pid  0        posix setsid       pcntl exec  cmd  args   ENV         child becomes the standalone detached process         parent s stuff  exit

User · Answer

In Linux  you can start a process in a new independent thread by appending an ampersand at the end of the command  mycommand -someparam somevalue  amp    In Windows  you can use the  start  DOS command  start mycommand -someparam somevalue

User · Answer

If it  doesn t care about the output   couldn t the exec to the script be called with the  amp  to background the process   EDIT - incorporating what  AdamTheHut commented to this post  you can add this to a call to exec      gt   dev null 2 gt  dev null  amp     That will redirect both stdio  first  gt   and stderr  2 gt   to  dev null and run in the background   There are other ways to do the same thing  but this is the simplest to read     An alternative to the above double-redirect      amp  gt   dev null  amp

User · Answer

php-execute-a-background-process has some good suggestions   I think mine is pretty good  but I m biased

User · Answer

the right way    to do it is to    fork   setsid   execve     fork forks  setsid tell the current process to become a master one  no parent   execve tell the calling process to be replaced by the called one  so that the parent can quit without affecting the child     pid pcntl fork     if  pid  0        posix setsid       pcntl exec  cmd  args   ENV         child becomes the standalone detached process         parent s stuff  exit

User · Answer

php-execute-a-background-process has some good suggestions   I think mine is pretty good  but I m biased

User · Answer

the right way    to do it is to    fork   setsid   execve     fork forks  setsid tell the current process to become a master one  no parent   execve tell the calling process to be replaced by the called one  so that the parent can quit without affecting the child     pid pcntl fork     if  pid  0        posix setsid       pcntl exec  cmd  args   ENV         child becomes the standalone detached process         parent s stuff  exit

User · Answer

I also found Symfony Process Component useful for this   use Symfony Component Process Process    process   new Process  ls -lsa           run process in background  process- gt start            do other things         if you need to wait  process- gt wait            do things after the process has finished   See how it works in its GitHub repo

User · Answer

You can also run the PHP script as daemon or cronjob     usr bin php -q

User · Answer

Use a named fifo      bin sh mkfifo trigger while true  do     read  lt  trigger     long running task done   Then whenever you want to start the long running task  simply write a newline  nonblocking to the trigger file   As long as your input is smaller than PIPE BUF and it s a single write   operation  you can  write arguments into the fifo and have them show up as  REPLY in the script

User · Answer

In Linux  you can start a process in a new independent thread by appending an ampersand at the end of the command  mycommand -someparam somevalue  amp    In Windows  you can use the  start  DOS command  start mycommand -someparam somevalue

User · Answer

The only way that I found that truly worked for me was   shell exec    myscript php   at now  amp  disown

User · Answer

the right way    to do it is to    fork   setsid   execve     fork forks  setsid tell the current process to become a master one  no parent   execve tell the calling process to be replaced by the called one  so that the parent can quit without affecting the child     pid pcntl fork     if  pid  0        posix setsid       pcntl exec  cmd  args   ENV         child becomes the standalone detached process         parent s stuff  exit

User · Answer

I used this             Asynchronously execute include a PHP file  Does not record the output of the file anywhere       Relies on the PHP PATH config constant         param string  filename  file to execute     param string  options    optional  arguments to pass to file via the command line      function asyncInclude  filename   options             exec PHP PATH     -f   filename    options   gt  gt   dev null  amp          where PHP PATH is a const defined like define  PHP PATH     opt bin php5   or similar   It passes in arguments via the command line  To read them in PHP  see argv

User · Answer

If it  doesn t care about the output   couldn t the exec to the script be called with the  amp  to background the process   EDIT - incorporating what  AdamTheHut commented to this post  you can add this to a call to exec      gt   dev null 2 gt  dev null  amp     That will redirect both stdio  first  gt   and stderr  2 gt   to  dev null and run in the background   There are other ways to do the same thing  but this is the simplest to read     An alternative to the above double-redirect      amp  gt   dev null  amp

User · Answer

On linux you can do the following    cmd    nohup nice -n 10 php -f php file php  gt  log file log  amp  printf   u        pid   shell exec  cmd     This will execute the command at the command prompty and then just return the PID  which you can check for   0 to ensure it worked   This question is similar  Does PHP have threading

User · Answer

php-execute-a-background-process has some good suggestions   I think mine is pretty good  but I m biased

User · Answer

On linux you can do the following    cmd    nohup nice -n 10 php -f php file php  gt  log file log  amp  printf   u        pid   shell exec  cmd     This will execute the command at the command prompty and then just return the PID  which you can check for   0 to ensure it worked   This question is similar  Does PHP have threading

User · Answer

On linux you can do the following    cmd    nohup nice -n 10 php -f php file php  gt  log file log  amp  printf   u        pid   shell exec  cmd     This will execute the command at the command prompty and then just return the PID  which you can check for   0 to ensure it worked   This question is similar  Does PHP have threading

User · Answer

To all Windows users  I found a good way to run an asynchronous PHP script  actually it works with almost everything    It s based on popen   and pclose   commands  And works well both on Windows and Unix   function execInBackground  cmd        if  substr php uname    0  7      Windows            pclose popen  start  B     cmd   r                else           exec  cmd      gt   dev null  amp                  Original code from  http   php net manual en function exec php 86329

User · Answer

You can also run the PHP script as daemon or cronjob     usr bin php -q

User · Answer

I used this             Asynchronously execute include a PHP file  Does not record the output of the file anywhere       Relies on the PHP PATH config constant         param string  filename  file to execute     param string  options    optional  arguments to pass to file via the command line      function asyncInclude  filename   options             exec PHP PATH     -f   filename    options   gt  gt   dev null  amp          where PHP PATH is a const defined like define  PHP PATH     opt bin php5   or similar   It passes in arguments via the command line  To read them in PHP  see argv

User · Answer

I used at for this  as it is really starting an independent process    lt  php      echo  the command  at now     gt

User · Answer

The only way that I found that truly worked for me was   shell exec    myscript php   at now  amp  disown

User · Answer

Use a named fifo      bin sh mkfifo trigger while true  do     read  lt  trigger     long running task done   Then whenever you want to start the long running task  simply write a newline  nonblocking to the trigger file   As long as your input is smaller than PIPE BUF and it s a single write   operation  you can  write arguments into the fifo and have them show up as  REPLY in the script

User · Answer

On linux you can do the following    cmd    nohup nice -n 10 php -f php file php  gt  log file log  amp  printf   u        pid   shell exec  cmd     This will execute the command at the command prompty and then just return the PID  which you can check for   0 to ensure it worked   This question is similar  Does PHP have threading

User · Answer

You can also run the PHP script as daemon or cronjob     usr bin php -q

User · Answer

I used at for this  as it is really starting an independent process    lt  php      echo  the command  at now     gt

User · Answer

If it  doesn t care about the output   couldn t the exec to the script be called with the  amp  to background the process   EDIT - incorporating what  AdamTheHut commented to this post  you can add this to a call to exec      gt   dev null 2 gt  dev null  amp     That will redirect both stdio  first  gt   and stderr  2 gt   to  dev null and run in the background   There are other ways to do the same thing  but this is the simplest to read     An alternative to the above double-redirect      amp  gt   dev null  amp

User · Answer

Use a named fifo      bin sh mkfifo trigger while true  do     read  lt  trigger     long running task done   Then whenever you want to start the long running task  simply write a newline  nonblocking to the trigger file   As long as your input is smaller than PIPE BUF and it s a single write   operation  you can  write arguments into the fifo and have them show up as  REPLY in the script

User · Answer

In Linux  you can start a process in a new independent thread by appending an ampersand at the end of the command  mycommand -someparam somevalue  amp    In Windows  you can use the  start  DOS command  start mycommand -someparam somevalue

User · Answer

If it  doesn t care about the output   couldn t the exec to the script be called with the  amp  to background the process   EDIT - incorporating what  AdamTheHut commented to this post  you can add this to a call to exec      gt   dev null 2 gt  dev null  amp     That will redirect both stdio  first  gt   and stderr  2 gt   to  dev null and run in the background   There are other ways to do the same thing  but this is the simplest to read     An alternative to the above double-redirect      amp  gt   dev null  amp

User · Answer

without use queue  you can use the proc open   like this        descriptorspec   array          0   gt  array  pipe    r            1   gt  array  pipe    w            2   gt  array  pipe    w        here curaengine log all the info into stderror             command    ping stackoverflow com        process   proc open  command   descriptorspec   pipes

User · Answer

I used at for this  as it is really starting an independent process    lt  php      echo  the command  at now     gt

User · Answer

You can also run the PHP script as daemon or cronjob     usr bin php -q

User · Answer

without use queue  you can use the proc open   like this        descriptorspec   array          0   gt  array  pipe    r            1   gt  array  pipe    w            2   gt  array  pipe    w        here curaengine log all the info into stderror             command    ping stackoverflow com        process   proc open  command   descriptorspec   pipes

User · Answer

I used at for this  as it is really starting an independent process    lt  php      echo  the command  at now     gt

User · Answer

To all Windows users  I found a good way to run an asynchronous PHP script  actually it works with almost everything    It s based on popen   and pclose   commands  And works well both on Windows and Unix   function execInBackground  cmd        if  substr php uname    0  7      Windows            pclose popen  start  B     cmd   r                else           exec  cmd      gt   dev null  amp                  Original code from  http   php net manual en function exec php 86329

User · Answer

I also found Symfony Process Component useful for this   use Symfony Component Process Process    process   new Process  ls -lsa           run process in background  process- gt start            do other things         if you need to wait  process- gt wait            do things after the process has finished   See how it works in its GitHub repo

User · Answer

php-execute-a-background-process has some good suggestions   I think mine is pretty good  but I m biased

User · Answer

Use a named fifo      bin sh mkfifo trigger while true  do     read  lt  trigger     long running task done   Then whenever you want to start the long running task  simply write a newline  nonblocking to the trigger file   As long as your input is smaller than PIPE BUF and it s a single write   operation  you can  write arguments into the fifo and have them show up as  REPLY in the script

User · Answer

In Linux  you can start a process in a new independent thread by appending an ampersand at the end of the command  mycommand -someparam somevalue  amp    In Windows  you can use the  start  DOS command  start mycommand -someparam somevalue

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