How to read command line arguments in PHP

You may be wondering how to pass variables to PHP script while running from command line. So this tutorial helps you to read command line arguments in PHP.

Query strings will work only in web browsers, so when using command line we should have a different approach.

$argv is the answer for this, it is the array of arguments passed to script.

See the below example is for  command line execution of PHP script

You just need to access the argv array in the mytest.php

#!/usr/bin/php
 <?php 
 // loop through each element in the $argv array 
foreach($argv as $value) {
    echo "$value\n";
} 
?>

This will print following output

mytest.php

arg1

arg2

arg3

As you see in example first argument will be always the self PHP script.

Instead of this, you can get the value with array key. For example first argument will be $argv[1], second will be $argv[2].

Enjoy working with command line arguments in PHP