Wikipedia information from the command line

wiki.php

#!/usr/bin/env php
<?php
    /*
     * A program to grab a quick summary of some topic from Wikipedia.
     * Usage: wiki <subject>
     *
     * subject can contain spaces if, for example, it is more than one word.
     * Examples
     * `wiki cherry bomb`
     * `wiki Hercules`
     *
     * Douglas Lenz 2015
     *
     */

    // Verify the correct number of command line args have been given
    $num_args = count($argv) - 1;
    if($num_args == 0) {
        echo "Usage: wiki <subject>\n";
        exit(0);
    }

    // Get the command line args that constitute the search term
    $args = [];
    for($i=0; $i < $num_args; $i++) {
        $args[] = $argv[$i+1];
    }

    // Where there are spaces, instead use _
    $search_term = join("_", $args);

    // Set up curl options
    $curl = curl_init();
    curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_URL, "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?continue=&action=query&titles=$search_term&prop=extracts&exintro=&explaintext=&format=json&redirects");
    curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);
    curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_USERAGENT, "WikiTerm/1.0");
    curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);

    // Run and close curl
    $result = curl_exec($curl);
    curl_close($curl);

    // Parse the JSON response and locate the data we want
    $data = json_decode($result, true);
    $subdata = $data['query']['pages'];
    $subsubdata = $subdata[array_keys($subdata)[0]];

    // Display to screen
    if(array_key_exists('missing', $subsubdata)) {
        echo "No articles found.";
    } else {
        echo "\n" . $subsubdata['title'] . "\n\n";
	exec("fold -s -w 80 <<EOF\n" . escapeshellarg($subsubdata['extract']) . "\nEOF", $lines, $_);
	foreach($lines as $line) {
	    echo $line . "\n";
	}
        //echo $subsubdata['extract'];
    }
    echo "\n";

    exit(0);

?>

Haters, really? Security considerations has nothing to do with hating on a good idea with a poor execution. When you post it on a subreddit dedicated to programming it shouldn't come as a surprise that someone looks at the code. If OP didn't want people to tell him about security flaws in his script, he probably shouldn't have posted it in /r/programming to begin with.

@Scroph You should reconsider how you view constructive criticism. I could have said "you suck, and your script sucks". Or, you know, spent the time telling OP why his script sucks, and how he should improve on it, so it's something anyone can use without worrying about a serious security flaw with a simple workaround.

When I said "haters", I meant haters towards PHP, a vibe that I got from your Reddit comment. But it's a hyperbole, a joke, no need to justify yourself, take it easy.

I agree about the fact that there is a vulnerability in OP's code, that's why I suggested using wordwrap() as a solution, thus avoiding the exec call altogether.

Ah, I see. Sorry about the confusion and the resulting rant! Reading my comment again I guess I was a bit frustrated for no real reason when writing it, sorry about that.

In this particular case I do think PHP is the wrong tool for the job though, as PHP is designed specifically for making webpages and not much else, but I respect that some may disagree with that. If you have php and php-curl already installed it doesn't matter though, the different scripts posted all accomplish the exact same thing :)

Good solution with wordwrap, hopefully it will be included in op's script soon for anyone else downloading it in the future.