Exit shell script using PHP exit code while looping?

Question

#!/bin/bash
cd  /maintenance;

for (( i=1;i<1000;i++)); do
    php -q dostuff.php $i    
done

I use this shell script to call the dostuff.php script and pass the $i as an agrv to the script. The script connects to a webservice that returns results 50 items at a time. The $i value is the page number... I have no way to know how many times it needs to be called (how many pages) until I get a response code back from CURL inside that script that I test for. I need to pass my own response code back to the shell script to have it stop looping... it will never get to 1000 iterations... it was just a quick loop I made.

If I use exec("php -q dostuff.php $i", $output, $return_var) how do I tell the script to keep executing and passing the incremented $i value until my php script exits with a response code of 0?

There has got to be a better way. Maybe a while? Just not that good with this syntax.

I have to start at page 1 and repeat until page XXX incrementing by 1 each iteration. When there are no more results I can test for this in the dostuff.php and exit(0). What is the best way to implement this in the shell script?

Thanks!

why dont you use php for your loop? it will exits whenever you want,and n your shell,just out php dostuff.php — Alireza Fallah
– Alireza Fallah, Commented Jan 2, 2014 at 19:19

gturri · Accepted Answer · 2014-01-02 21:30:59Z

1

You can check for the return value of the script, and break the loop if it isn't what is expected.

Usually a script returns 0 when it ran successfully, and something else otherwise, so if I assume your script respect this condition you could do:

#!/bin/bash
cd  /maintenance;

for (( i=1;i<1000;i++)); do
  php -q dostuff.php $i
  if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then break; fi 
done

On the other hand, if you want your script to return 0 if the loop shouldn't continue then you should do:

if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then break; fi

Edit: to take the comment into account to simplify the script:

If your script returns 0 when it shouldn't be called again, you instead do:

#!/bin/bash
cd  /maintenance;

for (( i=1;i<1000;i++)); do
  if php -q dostuff.php $i; then break; fi 
done

edited Jan 2, 2014 at 21:30

answered Jan 2, 2014 at 19:20

gturri

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2 Comments

tripleee Over a year ago

The concise and idiomatic way to write cmd; if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then x; fi is if cmd; then x; fi or simply cmd && x

gturri Over a year ago

@tripleee thanks for the advice. Edited the answer accordingly

Daniel W. · Accepted Answer · 2014-01-02 19:36:52Z

0

As already suggested in the comments, you might get way better control if you dont wrap the php script inside a bash script but instead use php-cli as the shell script (PHP is kinda shell):

#!/usr/bin/php
<?php
for ($i = 0; $i < 1000; $i++) {
    // contents of dostuff.php integrated
}

You might also be interested in using STDOUT, STDIN and STDERR:

http://php.net/manual/en/features.commandline.io-streams.php

answered Jan 2, 2014 at 19:36

Daniel W.

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1 Comment

user409858 Over a year ago

Don't know what I was thinking... of course.. just a while loop in php and then call the script from a command line... duh... thanks to both suggestions.

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