Execute JAR in PHP

Question

Hi

Currently I have a website on my local computer that uses PHP to make a call to a .jar program. It works fine when I run it on my local machine.

When I upload it to my host and try to run the same .jar file, I get no output...

Do you know why this is? Do I have to change the PHP.ini on my remote host to allow jars to be executable or something?

Any help is appreciated. Thanks Phil

EDIT:

Code snippet: shell_exec("java -jar news.jar get phil")

get and phil being two parameters to the news.jar program. I am using windows XP on my local machine, and I just have simple PHP MySQL hosting online. Does hosting such as this not support shell_exec() calls?

Answer 1

Code snippet: shell_exec("java -jar news.jar get phil")

It is extremely probable that this won't work out of the box on shared hosting, either because shell_exec() is disabled altogether, or executing java is not available to your shared hosting package, or the Java VM executing the jar doesn't have the rights to do what the jar wants to do.

You should be able to at least find out whether you can execute Java at all by using exec instead of shell_execute, giving it $output and &$return_var variables (see the linked manual page) and seeing what they contain after the call.

The best thing, though, would be talking to the provider and asking what is possible, and what isn't.