SSH2¶
ssh2 is a PIE extension, built on libssh2, that provides functions to open SSH connections from PHP and use them to execute remote commands, transfer files over SFTP or SCP, forward ports, and manage host authentication.
A connection is opened with ssh2_connect(), then authenticated with one of several methods: password, public key, or keyboard-interactive, via ssh2_auth_password() or ssh2_auth_pubkey_file(). Once authenticated, the extension exposes a stream for running remote shell commands with ssh2_exec(), and separate stream wrappers for SFTP file operations through ssh2_sftp().
The extension has historically had inconsistent packaging across distributions and PHP versions, which pushed many projects toward the pure-PHP phpseclib library instead, since it requires no compiled extension and works identically across environments.
<?php
$connection = ssh2_connect('example.com', 22);
ssh2_auth_pubkey_file(
$connection,
'user',
'/home/user/.ssh/id_rsa.pub',
'/home/user/.ssh/id_rsa'
);
$stream = ssh2_exec($connection, 'uptime');
stream_set_blocking($stream, true);
echo stream_get_contents($stream);
$sftp = ssh2_sftp($connection);
$remote = fopen('ssh2.sftp://' . $sftp . '/remote/path/file.txt', 'r');
?>
See also phpseclib, a pure-PHP alternative.
Related : File Transfer Protocol (FTP), Socket, OpenSSL
Related packages : phpseclib/phpseclib
