PHP exec doesn't return output

Question

I've a program which must be runned from cmd.exe and be supplid a few parameters. The command looks like this:

query.exe USERNAME PASSWORD WMI_QUERY MACHINE

This program is working fine. But when I try to run it from PHP with the following code:

function execute_query($ip, $username, $password, $query){

    $runCMD ="query.exe " . $username . " " . $password .  ' "' .$query . '" '  . $ip;
    echo exec($runCMD);
    print_r ($stdout);
}

I don't get any output. It says that the process terminated successfully, but nothing else, although the program runs and returns the output successfully. I'm using windows and XAMPP with php 7.1 I tired using shell_exec, but didn't have any luck. Any other ideas?

exec() returns output in an array for each line of output in the terminal. iirc shell_exec does not return anything. check the array param that is passed by reference - php.net/manual/en/function.exec.php — brianforan
– brianforan, Commented Nov 7, 2017 at 13:41
woops, ignore my first comment, i don't know why I thought shell_exec doesn't return anything, but $stdout is still not defined — brianforan
– brianforan, Commented Nov 7, 2017 at 13:43
It didn't run $runCMD because I was testing.I tried creating var $output = [] and set it as second argument, but it was empty when I printed it. — Deyan Georgiev
– Deyan Georgiev, Commented Nov 7, 2017 at 14:10

Felipe Valdes · Accepted Answer · 2017-11-07 14:08:22Z

1

I usually simply use:

passthru("the_command 2>&1");

the 2>&1 bit is to redirect STDERR to STDOUT, which is where your output probably is, when the command fails...

answered Nov 7, 2017 at 14:08

Felipe Valdes

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1 Comment

Felipe Valdes Over a year ago

also, to capture the output you can use ob_start() and ob_get_contents()

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