Running PHP from shell to get remote file

[noelking]

If anyone could please give me a little insight as to what to do here, i'd really appreciate it. I need to create a php script that gets a remote file from another server, searches through the file for a piece of information, and then takes that piece of information that it found and outputs it to another, local file. I need to be able to add this to a cron manager somehow though.. can you make a php script that runs from the shell rather than the browser? i'm totally lost in all aspects here, a real php newbie. any help would be greatly appreciated!

-Noel King

 

[sleipnir214]

First of all, yes, most PHP installations include a command-line invokable version of the language as well as the web server module.

Your best starting place would be in the PHP online manual:

http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.fopen.php

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[skiflyer]

Yes, yes you can. There's a command line interpreter for PHP, though it sounds like you're in Linux, and I'm not sure how to invoke it there, so I'll let someone who does fill you in.

As far as accessing a remote file, is it accessible via a URL or a filesystem path? If so, you can just use the
file();
function to read it into an array, then do your stuff.

If not you'll need some trickery, but I'd bet you get one of those two methods.

G'luck.

-Rob

 

[mikefn]

I'm suggesting that you use open socket connection.

http://www.devshed.com/Server_Side/PHP/SocketProgramming/page8.html

--
Mike FN
"8 out of 10 Owners who Expressed a Preference said Their Cats Preferred Web Programmer."

 

[sleipnir214]

noelking:
Perhaps this would be a good time to ask by exactly what method you will be fetching the file from the foreign server?

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