I have always used:
$pid = exec("/usr/local/bin/php file.php $args > /dev/null & echo \$!");
But I am using an XP virtual machine to develop a web app and I have no idea how to get the pid in windows.
I tried this on a cmd:
C:\\wamp\\bin\\php\\php5.2.9-2\\php.exe "file.php args" > NUL & echo $!
And it gets the file executed, but the output is "$!"
How can I get the pid into the var $pid? (using php)
You will have to install an extra extension, but found the solution located at Uniformserver's Wiki.
UPDATE
After some searching you might look into tasklist which coincidently, you may be able to use with the PHP exec command to get what you are after.
I'm using Pstools which allows you to create a process in the background and capture it's pid:
// use psexec to start in background, pipe stderr to stdout to capture pid
exec("psexec -d $command 2>&1", $output);
// capture pid on the 6th line
preg_match('/ID (\d+)/', $output[5], $matches);
$pid = $matches[1];
It's a little hacky, but it gets the job done
Here's a somewhat less "hacky" version of SeanDowney's answer.
PsExec returns the PID of the spawned process as its integer exit code. So all you need is this:
<?php
function spawn($script)
{
@exec('psexec -accepteula -d php.exe ' . $script . ' 2>&1', $output, $pid);
return $pid;
} // spawn
echo spawn('phpinfo.php');
?>
The -accepteula argument is needed only the first time you run PsExec, but if you're distributing your program, each user will be running it for the first time, and it doesn't hurt anything to leave it in for each subsequent execution.
PSTools is a quick and easy install (just unzip PSTools somewhere and add its folder to your path), so there's no good reason not to use this method.
