Task Automation in PHP: 10 Code Examples for Lazy Programmers

Why Automate Routine with PHP? Or How to Make the Computer Work for You

Imagine: every morning you log into the server, run a database backup, check error logs, generate yesterday's report, and send it to your boss. And then — again, and again. Boring? You bet. And more importantly, it's foolish to waste a programmer's time on what a machine can do.

PHP is not just about websites. This language is great for task automation in PHP: from simple file renaming to complex website parsing. In this article, I'll show you 10 real examples that will save you hours of work. All scripts are working and tested — take them and use them.

By the way, if you're looking for ready-made solutions for automation with PHP — you've come to the right place. Let's go!

1. Automatic Email Sending with Attachment (PDF Report)

The most common request from business: "Make reports come by themselves." Below is a simple script that sends an email with a PDF file.

<?php\nfunction sendReportWithAttachment($to, $subject, $body, $filePath) {\n    $boundary = md5(time());\n    \n    $headers = "MIME-Version: 1.0\\r\\n";\n    $headers .= "From: report@mysite.com\\r\\n";\n    $headers .= "Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary=\\"{$boundary}\\"\\r\\n";\n    \n    $message = "--{$boundary}\\r\\n";\n    $message .= "Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8\\r\\n\\r\\n";\n    $message .= $body . "\\r\\n\\r\\n";\n    \n    if (file_exists($filePath)) {\n        $content = file_get_contents($filePath);\n        $content = chunk_split(base64_encode($content));\n        $message .= "--{$boundary}\\r\\n";\n        $message .= "Content-Type: application/pdf; name=\\"" . basename($filePath) . "\\"\\r\\n";\n        $message .= "Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=\\"" . basename($filePath) . "\\"\\r\\n";\n        $message .= "Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64\\r\\n\\r\\n";\n        $message .= $content . "\\r\\n";\n    }\n    \n    $message .= "--{$boundary}--";\n    \n    return mail($to, $subject, $message, $headers);\n}\n\n// Usage:\nsendReportWithAttachment(\n    'boss@company.com',\n    'Daily report for ' . date('d.m.Y'),\n    'PDF report attached. Details in the file.',\n    '/var/reports/daily_report.pdf'\n);\n?>

How to automate: put this script in cron to run once a day — and reports will be sent automatically.

2. Website Parsing and Saving Data to CSV

Let's say you need to collect competitor prices or a list of vacancies. Parsing in PHP is easy. Use cURL and DOMDocument.

<?php\nfunction parseSiteToCSV($url, $cssSelector, $outputFile) {\n    $ch = curl_init();\n    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);\n    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);\n    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, true);\n    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERAGENT, 'Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64)');\n    \n    $html = curl_exec($ch);\n    curl_close($ch);\n    \n    if (!$html) {\n        return false;\n    }\n    \n    $dom = new DOMDocument();\n    @$dom->loadHTML($html);\n    $xpath = new DOMXPath($dom);\n    \n    $items = $xpath->query($cssSelector);\n    \n    $file = fopen($outputFile, 'w');\n    fputcsv($file, ['Text', 'Link']);\n    \n    foreach ($items as $item) {\n        $text = trim($item->textContent);\n        $link = $item->getAttribute('href') ?: '—';\n        fputcsv($file, [$text, $link]);\n    }\n    \n    fclose($file);\n    return true;\n}\n\n// Example: parse news headlines from a site\nparseSiteToCSV(\n    'https://news.ycombinator.com/',\n    '//tr[@class="athing"]/td[@class="title"]/a',\n    'hacker_news_titles.csv'\n);\n?>

This example of task automation in PHP can be run once an hour — and you'll get fresh data without a single click.

3. Auto