Some extensions may use the command-line utilities that Plesk provides to administrators as an alternative to performing operations from the GUI. The Command-Line Interface (CLI) has the same functions as XML API, but an operation output is provided as a plain text rather than an XML tree. Learn more about the command-line utilities in the following documents:

• Reference for Command-Line Utilities, Plesk for Linux
• Reference for Command-Line Utilities, Plesk for Microsoft Windows

To perform a CLI call, use the pm_ApiCli class.

Executing Utilities

A command-line call is performed by the method:

• call()

The first argument is the utility name, and the second argument is the array of options and their values. The optional third argument specifies what kind of information about the utility’s execution results is returned.

Example: Retrieving the license key information

The following example retrieves information about the current Plesk license key:

$result = pm_ApiCli::call('keyinfo', ['-l']);
var_dump($result);

The output should be similar to the following:

array(3) {
    ["code"] =>
        int(0)

    ["stdout"] =>
        string(447) "plesk_key_id: 0
        license_update_date: 20350101
        lim_date: 20120501
        lim_cl: -1
        ...
        "

    ["stderr"] =>
        string(0) ""
}

In more complex situations, divide a call into arguments and add each argument as an array item. For example:

customer --create johnusername -name "John Doe" -passwd sample -country US -notify false

should be transformed to:

pm_ApiCli::call('customer', ['--create', 'johnusername', '-name', 'John Doe', '-passwd', 'sample', '-country', 'US', '-notify', 'false']);

Example: Processing utility execution results

It is possible to choose what kind of information about the utility’s execution is returned by the call. To do that, specify the type of return value in the last parameter to the call(), like this:

$result = pm_ApiCli::call('license', ['--check-installed-license'], pm_ApiCli::RESULT_CODE);

In this example, the $result variable will be assigned the error code generated by the execution of ‘license’ with parameter ‘--check-installed-license’, which is ‘0’ if the installed license key is valid and ‘1’ otherwise.

All available types of return values are described here: pm_ApiCli Constants.

If the utility’s execution results in error code ‘0’, using RESULT_EXCEPTION returns the same array of values as does RESULT_FULL (code, stdout, stderr). But if the resulting error code is not ‘0’, using RESULT_EXCEPTION causes an exception (pm_Exception_ResultException) to be thrown.

Executing Privileged Utilities

The directory /<product-root>/admin/bin/ contains utilities that are run with elevated privileges. In addition to this, an extension can bring some utilities that should be run with elevated privileges. Such utilities are placed in the directory /<product-root>/admin/bin/modules/$MODULE_NAME.

You can run such utilities by using the method:

• callSbin()

For example:

$result = pm_ApiCli::callSbin('my-utility');
var_dump($result);

By default, the utility called my-utility will be searched for in the directory /<product-root>/admin/bin/modules/$MODULE_NAME. If the utility is not found, it will then be searched for in the directory /usr/local/psa/admin/bin/.