Command line scripts

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Table of contents:

What is a CLI script

A command line script is a php script which can have parameters

Cronjob vs CLI scripts

Cronjob and CLI scripts are similar in the way that they are both run from the command line. However, there are two important differences between CLI scripts and cronjob scripts:

  • CLI scripts can have parameters, while cronjob scripts cannot take any parameters
  • Cronjob scripts set up the environment for you. That means creating a connection to the database, activating a siteaccess and activating extensions. If you implement a CLI script, you need to do all of this yourself.

Examples of CLI scripts are located in ./bin/php/*.php

Examples of Cronjob scripts are located in ./cronjobs/*.php

Example eZ script

This is a generic example cli, command line, shell script.

#!/usr/bin/env php
<?php

include_once( 'kernel/classes/ezscript.php' );
include_once( 'lib/ezutils/classes/ezcli.php' );

$cli =& eZCLI::instance();

/*
    general script settings
    
    array with the following keys:
    
    debug-message: false
    debug-output: false
    debug-include: false
    debug-levels: false
    debug-accumulator: false
    debug-timing: false
    use-session: false
    use-extensions: false
    use-modules: false
    user: false, or an array with the keys 'login' and 'password'
    description: 'eZ publish script',
    site-access: false
    min-version: false
    max-version: false

*/
$scriptSettings = array();
$scriptSettings['description'] = 'your description of this script comes here';
$scriptSettings['use-session'] = true;
$scriptSettings['use-modules'] = true;
$scriptSettings['use-extensions'] = true;

$script =& eZScript::instance( $scriptSettings );
$script->startup();

/*
    script option configuration
    
    [optionname]
    
    value indications
    --------------------
    : -> must have a value
    ; -> can have a value

    quantity indications
    ----------------------
    ? -> min: 0; max: 1
    * -> min: 0, max: unbounded
    + -> min: 1, max: unbounded
*/
$config = '';

/*
    script argument configuration
*/
$argumentConfig = '';

/*
    script option help
    
    specify a hash with option identifiers as keys and their help text as values
*/
$optionHelp = false;

/*
    arguments
*/
$arguments = false;

/*
    standard options
    
    array( 'debug' => true,
          'colors' => true,
          'log' => true,
          'siteaccess' => true,
          'verbose' => true,
          'user' => false )
*/
$useStandardOptions = true;

$options = $script->getOptions( $config, $argumentConfig, $optionHelp, $arguments, $useStandardOptions );
$script->initialize();

/*
    $options['arguments'] is an array with all arguments passed to the script from the command line
    
    check for correct argument count:
    if ( count( $options['arguments'] ) != 1 )
    {
        $script->shutdown( 1, 'wrong argument count' );
    }

    show help:
    
    $script->showHelp();
    
    auto-login as a specific user, without specifying a password:
    
    include_once( 'kernel/classes/datatypes/ezuser/ezuser.php' );
    $user = eZUser::fetchByName( 'admin' );
    $userID = $user->attribute( 'contentobject_id' );
    eZUser::setCurrentlyLoggedInUser( $user, $userID );
*/

$script->shutdown( 0 );

?>

Troubleshooting

Operations don't seem to work

Make sure you have enabled the loading of modules: $scriptSettings['use-modules'] = true;

Nodes are not fetched correctly

Make sure you have enabled the user command line options: $useStandardOptions = array( 'user' => true );
Now use the --login and --password command line options to log in with a privileged user.

The only output is ": No such file or directory"

Make sure your script has UNIX line endings (LF only).

Script ends with a fatal error

Fatal error: eZ publish did not finish its request
The execution of eZ publish was abruptly ended, the debug output is present below.

You probably forgot to properly shutdown the script with $script->shutdown( 0 );

External resources