Is it possible to read cookie/session value while executing PHP5 script through command prompt?

Question

I need to read some values from cookie or session when I am executing my php script using command prompt. How can I do that?

How to access cookie or session value from Windows command prompt?

Typography

Cookies don't make sense in a CLI environment? – Osmose

Answer 1

Cookies are sent from the user's web browser. When you execute a php script from the command line, there is no browser to send or receive cookies. There is no way to access or save cookies and nothing is sent to the script except the parameters you pass on the command line.

That being said, there is a way to read a session that someone with a browser has already accessed if you know their PHPSESSID cookie.

Let's say someone has accessed your script with a web browser and their PHPSESSID is a1b2c3d4, and you want to execute the script with their session. Execute the following at the command line.

php -r '$_COOKIE["PHPSESSID"] = "a1b2c3d4"; session_start(); require("path_to_php_script.php");'

Where path_to_php_script.php is the path to the php script you want to execute. And actually, you shouldn't have to start the session if the php file you want to execute starts the session itself. So, you may want to actually try this command:

php -r '$_COOKIE["PHPSESSID"] = "a1b2c3d4"; require("path_to_php_script.php");'

OK, now let's say you don't want to access someone's session, but you just want to execute the script as if you already had a session. Just execute the previous command, but put in any sessionid you want. And your session will remain intact between calls to the script as long as you use the same PHPSESSID every time you call the script.

Bull

your method is working on local server(xampp) but when i tried it on my web server (VPS plan on godaddy) ,it doesn't work. It seems that we can not read session in command-line scripts. It is hosted on a centOS. Can you please give some solution. – Fornix

You should be able to read session info on the command line. But, there are many things to consider that may cause issues depending on your environment. It could be that on the command line the environment is different... This can happen if your web environment is using php-fpm with certain options. Some things to consider.... Is the system user the same? Is your web environment chrooted? Are the session options the same on the command line vs web? I would suggest doing a phpinfo() in both web and command line and comparing.... Perhaps this will give some insight. – Bull

Answer 2

There are no cookies in the CLI, so... yeah.

You can pass the desired session name as an argument or environment variable and then use session_name() to set it in your script.

Ten

Answer 3

You should try this:

exec('php -r \'$_COOKIE["'.session_name().'"]="'.$_COOKIE[session_name()].'";include("file_path.php");\'');

Then on your script, do this:

session_start();
@session_decode(@file_get_contents(session_save_path().'/sess_'.$_COOKIE[session_name()]));

And now you have your session ready to be used!

Remember that the function session_save_path() will get the "default" path, set in .ini files.

You can always use a custom path to load the session.

Grishilde

What is the point of session_start()? I would have expected PHP to do that within session_start() automatically? – Threw

@gogowitsch Cookies are passed over HTTP.... He wants to run from the console (in this case, to run the executable directly without HTTP). – Grishilde

My gut feeling is that line 1 and 2 of your second code block above are doing the exact same thing, except session_start will also register a function to write the $_SESSION content back to disk when the script finishes. Aktually all he needs is set the session ID, then call session_start(). At least under Xampp (Windows), I got this working smoothly. However, all my attempts under Linux failed. I didn't put enough time in to know why. Another thing to keep in mind is that the browser user with that session might be waiting while the session is locked by CLI. – Threw

@gogowitsch What I'm doing is manually setting the value of the variable used by PHP to extract the session ID, so your session can be started normally. – Grishilde