Call a PHP function from the command line

Use

php  -r 'include  "/var/www/test/address.php";exportAddress(1);'

where "/var/www/test/arr.php" is the file name, including path, and exportAddress() is a function inside that file.

Add this to the top of the file "/var/www/test/address.php"...

foreach ($argv as $i=>$arg )
{
    if ( $arg == "exportAddress" )
    { 
        exportAddress($argv[$i+1]);
    }
}

Then from the command line, execute:

php /var/www/test/address.php exportAddress 12345

You can make your file "somefile.php" organized as follows:

function func1(){....}
function func2(){....}
function func3(){....}
....
foreach ($argv AS $arg){
    function_exists($arg) AND call_user_func($arg);
}

Then from the command line or a Linux cronjob, you run the following command:

php /path/to/somefile.php arg1 arg2 arg3 ...

As of PHP 5.1.0 (7.1.0 on windows) PHP can be executed from the shell by running

php -a

This starts PHP's interactive shell. More info here.

With PHP's shell, running you can require files the same way you would from a file.

So if the previous command was run from the folder containing the file:

php > require 'myFile.php';

If it is in a subfolder:

php > require 'path/to/file/myFile.php';

Then execute any function defined in myFile.php.

php > myFunction(myParamsIfAny);

I guess you can use any variable defined in the same file or require any other file containing the variables needed, although I haven't tried it.

To extend on Samer Ata and Simon Rodan's answers, you can use the following to be able to execute any function with any amount of arguments:

if(isset($argv[1]) && function_exists($argv[1])) {
  $parameters = array_slice($argv, 2);
  call_user_func($argv[1], ...$parameters);
}

This is done by removing the script and function name from $argv and then using the spread operator (...) to interpret each element in the array as an argument to call_user_func.

The operator is supported from PHP 5.6 onward (and 5.5 can do some of the things using functions). You can read more about it in the official PHP documentation. For completeness, this is also known as argument unpacking.

Note that using php -r assumes php-cli is the binary that got installed as ‘php’. If php -v shows the ‘php’ is php-cgi, type /path/to/php/bin/php-cli -r instead. In case it’s not there, you’ll have to re-compile with cli enabled.

The doc has relevant pages on this.

for call a specific function in a PHP file from the command line by using -r:

php -r 'include "address.php"; exportAddress("value");'

tip: "value" is the actual value that you want to pass to the exportAddress function.