Executing Shell Commands In Laravel

#laravel #php

Both shell_exec() and exec() do the job - until they don't.

If your command crash for some reason, you won't know - shell_exec() and exec() don't throw Exceptions. They just fail silently. 😱

So, here is my solution to encounter this problem:

use Symfony\Component\Process\Process;

class ShellCommand
{
    public static function execute($cmd): string
    {
        $process = Process::fromShellCommandline($cmd);

        $processOutput = '';

        $captureOutput = function ($type, $line) use (&$processOutput) {
            $processOutput .= $line;
        };

        $process->setTimeout(null)
            ->run($captureOutput);

        if ($process->getExitCode()) {
            $exception = new ShellCommandFailedException($cmd . " - " . $processOutput);
            report($exception);

            throw $exception;
        }

        return $processOutput;
    }
}

It utilises Symfony's Process (which comes out of the box to Laravel). ✨

With this way, I can throw a custom exception, log the command and the output to investigate, report it to my logs to investigate, etc.

No more failing silently 😇

Hope you like this little piece! If you do, please give it a ❤️