Running a Zend Framework action from command line

Question

I would like to run a Zend Framework action to generate some files, from command line. Is this possible and how much change would I need to make to my existing Web project that is using ZF?

Thanks!

Answer 1

If you want to run an action that is inside your web project from command line, you can't. The only thing you can run from command line in the Zend Framework is Zend_Tool, which lets you create new actions, controllers, etc.

Answer 2

One option is that you could fudge it by doing a wget on the URL that you use to invoke the desirable action

Answer 3

You can just use PHP as you would normally from the command line. If you call a script from PHP and either set the action in your script you can then run whatever you want.

It would be quite simple really. Its not really the intended usage, however this is how it could work if you wanted to.

For example

 php script.php 

Read here: http://php.net/manual/en/features.commandline.php

Answer 4

You can use wget command if your OS is Linux. For example:

wget http://example.com/controller/action

See http://linux.about.com/od/commands/l/blcmdl1_wget.htm

UPDATE:

You could write a simple bash script like this:

if wget http://example.com/controller/action
    echo "Hello World!" > /home/wasdownloaded.txt
else
    "crap, wget timed out, let's remove the file."
    rm /home/wasdownloaded.txt
fi

Then you can do in PHP:

if (true === file_exists('/home/wasdownloaded.txt') {
    // to check that the 
}

Hope this helps.

Answer 5

It's actually much easier than you might think. The bootstrap/application components and your existing configs can be reused with CLI scripts, while avoiding the MVC stack and unnecessary weight that is invoked in a HTTP request. This is one advantage to not using wget.

Start your script as your would your public index.php:

<?php

// Define path to application directory
defined('APPLICATION_PATH')
    || define('APPLICATION_PATH',
              realpath(dirname(__FILE__) . '/../application'));

// Define application environment
defined('APPLICATION_ENV')
    || define('APPLICATION_ENV',
              (getenv('APPLICATION_ENV') ? getenv('APPLICATION_ENV')
                                         : 'production'));

require_once 'Zend/Application.php';
$application = new Zend_Application(
    APPLICATION_ENV,
    APPLICATION_PATH . '/configs/config.php'
);

//only load resources we need for script, in this case db and mail
$application->getBootstrap()->bootstrap(array('db', 'mail'));

You can then proceed to use ZF resources just as you would in an MVC application:

$db = $application->getBootstrap()->getResource('db');

$row = $db->fetchRow('SELECT * FROM something');

If you wish to add configurable arguments to your CLI script, take a look at Zend_Console_Getopt

If you find that you have common code that you also call in MVC applications, look at wrapping it up in an object and calling that object's methods from both the MVC and the command line applications. This is general good practice.