Bootstrapping Craft gives fatal error

Question

I'm using Craft Pro 2.3.2625

I'm trying to write a command-line called script which can call Craft's functions (to create new entries with assets).

Based on Brandon's updated answer here:

Bootstrap Craft from another app

Using:

$craft = require 'craft/app/bootstrap.php';

in a standalone script should just work after Craft 2.2 - but doing so gives me the following errors (paths tweaked to remove project name):

PHP Notice:  Undefined index: SERVER_NAME in craft/app/bootstrap.php on line 105

Notice: Undefined index: SERVER_NAME in craft/app/bootstrap.php on line 105

Notice: Undefined property: Craft\WebApp::$request in craft/app/controllers/TemplatesController.php on line 156

Fatal error: Call to a member function isSiteRequest() on a non-object in craft/app/controllers/TemplatesController.php on line 156

Answer 1

That bootstrap file is only meant to be used by web applications. Even if you got past this error, the file is still going to give you a WebApp instance, when what you really want to be working with in that environment is a ConsoleApp.

If you want to load Craft from the command line, use craft/app/etc/console/yiic instead (make sure it has executable permissions), or if you already have a PHP script running, load yiic.php.

Unfortunately those files don’t work like bootstrap.php though - they will not only instantiate a ConsoleApp instance, they’ll run it as well. So you would need to provide your own functionality through a plugin that adds custom console commands. You would do that by creating a consolecommands folder in your plugin folder, with files inside it that end with Command.php (e.g. MyPlugin_UtilsCommand.php) and a matching class name, which extends BaseCommand.

More details about how to write the class are available from BaseCommand’s class reference.