Pass parameter from php to casperjs/phantomjs

Question

Edit: I answered my own question, see edit below.

ORIGINAL: I have phantomjs and casperjs installed on my web server and they both run fine. The script I am planning on creating relise on a user input from my website, which is then passed on to the casperjs script. After fiddling around a bit, I noticed that I am stuck on the very basic task of the user input. How would pass the variable from php to casperjs?

Please note, the following are just test scripts.

My php script

$user_input = $_POST['user_input'];

putenv("PHANTOMJS_EXECUTABLE=/usr/local/bin/phantomjs");
exec('/usr/local/bin/casperjs hello.js 2>&1',$output);
print_r($output);

hello.js

var user_input = "http://example.com/";
var casper = require('casper').create({
  verbose: true,
  logLevel: 'error',
  pageSettings: {
    loadImages: false,
    loadPlugins: false
  }
});

casper.start(user_input, function() {
    this.echo(this.getTitle());
});

casper.run();

So how would I pass the $user_input to the hello.js. My goal is that the user can input a url which is then being scraped.

You can post that answer as 'Answer' and accept it. That is the proper way to do it. — Harikrishnan, Apr 18 '14 at 05:12
Yes, please post it as self-answer. Your answer is basically correct, but use `escapeshellarg` (even if you know this, someone copy and pasting from your answer in future might not). (E.g. user_input = ';rm -rf /etc/' ) — Darren Cook, Apr 18 '14 at 12:46
I had to wait 48 hours until I could answer myself. I fixed it now. Thanks — Kevin M, May 05 '14 at 20:25

score 5 · Accepted Answer · answered May 05 '14 at 20:24

I found the answer myself.

It seems phantomjs and casperjs support command line arguments http://phantomjs.org/api/system/property/args.html

My script now looks like this.

test.php

$user_input = $_POST['user_input'];

putenv("PHANTOMJS_EXECUTABLE=/usr/local/bin/phantomjs");
exec('/usr/local/bin/casperjs hello.js $user_input 2>&1',$output);

print_r($output);

hello.js

var system = require('system');
var args = system.args;
var address = args[4]; //In my case 4 was the argument for $user_input, yours might be different, depending on your server setup.

var casper = require('casper').create({
  verbose: true,
  logLevel: 'error',
  pageSettings: {
    loadImages: false,
    loadPlugins: false
  }
});

casper.start(address, function() {
    this.echo(this.getTitle());
});

casper.run();

Pass parameter from php to casperjs/phantomjs

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