Quick way to determine if php is running at the command line

25 Jul 2009

Many times it is necessary to determine if the php script is running on the command prompt. Recently I wrote a php shell script which could also be run from a browser and needed to decide in the code if to output a '\n' or a ‘html break’ after a text line.

The following simple function returns a true if the script is run from a command prompt and false otherwise.

It uses the php_sapi_name() function, which returns a string that describes the type of interface PHP is using. The possible return values of the php_sapi_name() function include: aolserver, apache, apache2filter, apache2handler, caudium, cgi (until PHP 5.3), cgi-fcgi, cli, continuity, embed, isapi, litespeed, milter, nsapi, phttpd, pi3web, roxen, thttpd, tux, and webjames.

<?php
 
function isCli() {
 
     if(php_sapi_name() == 'cli' && empty($_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'])) {
          return true;
     } else {
          return false;
     }
}
 
?>

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4 Responses

kureikain

July 25th, 2009 at 11:19 am

Great! Thank you!
But i think we can make it shorter with this command:
return (php_sapi_name() == ‘cli’ && empty($_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']))

Alex

July 26th, 2009 at 2:26 pm

Aren’t you also able to check the count of argc? If called from the command line, it will exist in the $_SERVER superglobal and its count will be at least one (the first item being the name of the file):

$using_cli = (@$_SERVER['argc'] >= 1);

Jorge

April 3rd, 2010 at 10:27 am

$_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'] would throw a warning if it’s not set. Check to see if it exists before checking it’s value.

Either way, this was helpful, thanks!

Rob

May 20th, 2010 at 5:03 pm

Jorge: empty() will act in the same way as isset() with regards to indices not being set.
if (empty($_SERVER['non_existant'])) will not cause an error to be thrown.

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