Laravel 5.2: Running SSH / SFTP Commands In Your Scripts

Recently, I had to create a Laravel Artisan script that would log into a SFTP server, check if a certain file exists, and then upload / override the file. To achieve this, I used the SSH library from LaravelCollective. This tutorial covers how to log into a remote server using SSH / SFTP and upload or download files.

Installation

The first step is to use composer to install the SSH library from LaravelCollective. You can achieve this by running the following command:

composer require "laravelcollective/remote":"^5.2.0"

The next step is to update the providers and alias in config/app.php. Add the following line to the providers array:

Collective\Remote\RemoteServiceProvider::class

And add the following line to the aliases array:

'SSH' => Collective\Remote\RemoteFacade::class

Finally, publish the config file using the artisan command:

php artisan vendor:publish --provider="Collective\Remote\RemoteServiceProvider"

Edit the config/remote.php with your required settings and you’re ready to go. For example, your configuration could look like:

Usage

Once setup, running commands is easy. For some examples, see:

In addition to exists, put, run and get, other commands exist in the SSH library. For example, you can define a sequence of commands, and run them as a task. Be sure to check out the LaravelCollective SSH documentation for other examples.