I find PHP command line interface very useful, for CRON jobs, testing and whenever apache is not necessary. Basic commands here: CLI php.net manual. In this article I’m writing some CL flags and few lines of related functions / PHP code I find useful

• To make script interactive and read the line from the console

  $var = readline("text");

• Prints reflection of a function (params and required values). Can be used as a guide

  php -rf json_encode

• save highlited code into a html file

  php -s file.php > fileWithCodeHighlited.phtml

• Display a ini setting containing “log_” (e.g. error_log)

  php -i | grep "log_"

• Run one command (without entering in interactive mode with php -a)

  php -r "echo time();";

• Set a INI option before executing

  php -d max_execution_time=20 ...

• Read from STDIN (when piped)

  $handle = fopen('php://stind', 'r');
  while (!feof($handle)) {
  	$line = trim(fgets($handle));
  	if(strlen($line) > 0){
  	echo strrev($line).PHP_EOL;
  	}
  }
  fclose($handle);

• Get options using getopt

  $arg = getopt('ab:c::') // "a" as flag "b" required, "c" optional