How do I pass a wildcard GLOB to rsync wrapped by Symfony Console?

Question

What I want to do

I want to move all XML files from /source/ to /target/

How I try to do it

rsync -avz --remove-source-files /source/*.xml /target/

I am using the Symfony Process / Console Component as a wrapper for rsync.

Process Component ^5.0
Symfony Console ^4.3
PHP 7.2.


protected function execute(InputInterface $input, OutputInterface $output){   
        $process = new Process([
            'rsync', '-azv', '--remove-source-files',
            $input->getArgument('source-path'),
            $input->getArgument('target-path')
        ]);
}

My Problems

Calling my command by running php bin/console command:moveFiles /source/*.xml /target/ results in:

Too many arguments, expected arguments "command" "source-path" "target-path".

It seems like the * in /source/*.xml throws off Symfony (?) and does not let it recognize the correct amount of arguments provided. Escaping the * as in rsync -avz --remove-source-files /source/\*.xml /target/ results in:

rsync: link_stat "/source/*.xml" failed: No such file or directory (2)

How can I pass the wildcard GLOB to rsync wrapped by symfony? Is there another way to achieve this using the console?

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 22 '20 at 11:01

So I did indeed not manage to resolve the issue but I created a workaround:


    protected function configure()
    {
        $this->setName('jaya:moveFiles')
            ->addArgument('source-path')
            ->addArgument('target-path')
            ->addArgument('include-filext')
            ->setDescription('Sync files with option --remove-source-files from „source-path“ to „target-path“.');
    }

    protected function execute(InputInterface $input, OutputInterface $output)
    {
    $src = $input->getArgument('source-path');
    $target = $input->getArgument('target-path');
    $include = $input->getArgument('include-filext');

    $process = new Process([
        'rsync', '-avz', '--remove-source-files', '--include="*.' . $include . '"',      $src, $target
    ]);
    $process->run();
}

I added another inputArgument called 'include-fileext' to which I can pass some file extention string ('pdf', 'xml', 'jpg', ...). This file extention gets concatenated with the infamous wildchard character '*'. That way I do not actually pass the wildcard character as part of the parameter and therefore I avoid having issues.

Instead of passing '/source-path/*.xml' and '/target-path/' I pass '/source-path/', 'pdf' and '/target-path/'. This results in the Symfony console executing rsync -avz --remove-source-files --include="*.pdf" /source-path/ /target-path/ and transfers only files matching my include pattern.

How do I pass a wildcard GLOB to rsync wrapped by Symfony Console?

1 Answers1