How do I call a perl script from my Symfony2 controller?

Question

I am trying to implement an automatic submission to an information management system from within my Symfony2 application. Someone else has written a perl script for the submission. I just need to use the controller to get values from an entity to pass to the script as arguments.

I have tested the perl script by running a short php script from the command line:

<?php

$perlscript = 'test_submit_to_lims.pl';

$output = \shell_exec('perl ' . $perlscript . " 'arg1' 'arg2' 'arg3' ");
echo $output;

?>

This returns a string with some values of interest which I need for my application.

I have put the perl script and dependent files in a folder called dependencies at the same level as my Symfony project folder

I tried to use similar code in my controller:

...

$arg1 = $form->get('arg1')->getData();
$arg2 = $form->get('arg2')->getData();
$arg3 = $form->get('arg3')->getData();
$pathToScript = '/opt/sfprojects/dependencies';
$perlScript = "$pathToScript/test_submit_to_lims.pl";
$output = \shell_exec('perl '.$perlScript." $arg1 $arg2 $arg3 ");
var_dump($output);

...

This gives me "Network Error: 500 Internal Server Error - http://www2-mywebsite.org/myEntity/create"

I'm not sure whether the error is caused by something simple in my php code, by the need to somehow enable perl in a Symfony configuration file or something else like the location of the script, file permissions, etc.

I would appreciate any ideas of where I may have gone wrong.

I don't think your 500 is coming from Perl. Since you make a system call, why should it give you an HTTP status code? Maybe something is failing so that you are sending data back to the client without having sent an HTTP header first? — simbabque
– simbabque, Commented Nov 8, 2012 at 11:14
Sorry, should have been more explicit, I know the error isn't in the perl code, since when I run a short php script that executes it, it works fine. The origin of the error is in my controller class, so there must be a problem with how I'm executing the script there. — j_goldman
– j_goldman, Commented Nov 8, 2012 at 11:29
There could be a lot of reasons why your app failed. Try run your app through app_dev.php front controller or look inside logs to figure out what went wrong. — Cyprian
– Cyprian, Commented Nov 8, 2012 at 13:31
I have discovered and corrected one error - namely that the variables I pass in need to be enclosed in single quotes as some contain strings consisting of more than one word. Without doing this, it looks like each word is a separate argument. However, it still doesn't work. — j_goldman
– j_goldman, Commented Nov 12, 2012 at 11:26

Jakub Zalas · Accepted Answer · 2012-11-08 21:23:47Z

1

Check your web server and Symfony logs to see what kind of error you're getting. Symfony logs are located in app/logs directory of your project (by default). Server logs location depends on your configuration.

Remember, you can use development controller (app_dev.php) to see more details about the error (including the stack trace).

To actually run your command consider using the Process component.

answered Nov 8, 2012 at 21:23

Jakub Zalas

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1 Comment

j_goldman Over a year ago

thanks for the suggestion. I tried using the process component. $process->getErrorOutput() returns: ''perl' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.' I tried calling perl as '/usr/bin/perl', but then the error is: 'The system cannot find the path specified.'

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