CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

You can use CRM_Core_Resources::singleton()->getUrl('org.my.extension', 'my/file/name.php'). (Similarly, if you need the local file-path to an extension, use getPath().)

You may want to consider registering a new page instead (e.g. "civix generate:page ExportToExcel civicrm/myextension/export" or hook_civicrm_xmlMenu). There are two main issues with pointing to a standalone script in an extension:

• If the .php needs access to Civi or to the CMS, it will need to bootstrap. That's very hard to do in a portable way because the extension directory is allowed to go anywhere in the filesystem.
• If a reference to the URL needs to be communicated/stored externally, then it becomes part of the public interface that should get documented for sysadmins. It's easier to document/support a page that is registered through an XML file.

Note: By defualt, pages produced by "civix generate:page" output HTML. But you can short-circuit it and output non-HTML, e.g.

  function run() {
    header('Content-type: application/foo');
    echo $excelEncoder->encodeRows($myData);
    CRM_Utils_System::civiExit();
  }


Another reason to follow the page approach is that on some installations (quite common on nginx drupal setup) only the registered entry points are allowed to run .php, and you have to explicitly add on your nginx config you want the update.php or whatever.php to be allowed to run.

I still thing it's a good security measure, but a bit of a PITA to debug when random feature doesn't work because they use their own .php

X+

btw, both mathieu and myself wrote and extension to do excel stuff, if your need is generic enough, might be worthwhile to modify one of these to add the feature instead of starting a new one?

X+

btw, both mathieu and myself wrote and extension to do excel stuff

Details!? This could be really useful for my team.