okay so i dont know if this is possible and to be honest im leaning more towards the not possible end of the scale but i thought it might be worth asking.
Basically what i am wanting to know is if it is possible to capture shell output rendered with ncurses in php for use with tools such as htop.
i have noticed that php has a whole bunch of experimental ncurses functions but they all seem to be aimed at creating content not reading it. Ideally id like something where i could end up with something like
$output = ncurses_exec("htop --no-loop");
NOTE: im aware that htop doesnt have an option for --no-loop but i added it to make the program exit after the first rendering (rendering can be cleared or kept) just for testing purposes
Thanks in advance
There is a solution:
Use Gnu Screen
Send commands to screen running in detached mode. Here is a quick-and-dirty example just to get you started:
<?php
// Start screen in detached mode, running htop
`screen -d -m -S htop_session htop`;
// let screen and htop start
sleep(1);
// Tell screen to save a screenshot in file 'hardcopy.0'
`screen -p 0 -S htop_session -X hardcopy`;
// Tell screen to quit
`screen -p 0 -S htop_session -X quit`;
?>
<pre>
<?php print file_get_contents('hardcopy.0'); ?>
</pre>
Things to try