Updating multiple sites on the same directory with PHP and Drush

Hi,

Before I start let me just said that there are probably other ways to do this, but this solution worked for me and I am sharing it so that it can help anyone in a similar situation.

I have a shared hosting account where I, over time, have been creating multiple Drupal installations for different clients or projects of my own. I never did a multi-site installation and I don't share modules between the sites. My share hosting company has Drush installed server wide and the process of updating sites is painless, but it was just taking me forever to login into SSH, then CD into each site folder, and run the drush command to check for update, and to run the updates. I also like removing those text files that come with every Drupal installation like LICENSE.txt

My current site structure:

/main/
/main/site-1/
/main/site-2/
/main/site-3/
....
/main/site-n/

The solution, in my case, was to create a single PHP that will check every folder and then apply the update and delete the files. Here is the code:

<?php

/**
  This file was created by Emil Acosta
  to keep all drupal sites hosted on this
  account upto date with a minimum effort 
  using the Drush tool.
*/

// Base path
$mypath = '/main';

// Drush path
$drush_path = $mypath.'/drush/drush';

// Drupal sites
$mysites = array(
				 'site-1', 
				 'site-2', 
				 'site-3', 
				 'site-n', 
				 );

// Unwanted files
$unwanted = array(
				  'CHANGELOG.txt', 
				  'INSTALL.mysql.txt', 
				  'INSTALL.sqlite.txt', 
				  'LICENSE.txt', 
				  'README.txt', 
				  'UPGRADE.txt', 
				  'COPYRIGHT.txt', 
				  'INSTALL.pgsql.txt', 
				  'INSTALL.txt', 
				  'MAINTAINERS.txt',
				  );

//Drush Commands to execute
$commands = array(
					'Clearing site cache' => 'cc all',
					'Running cron' => 'cron',
					'Checking for updates' => 'rf',
					'Applying the updates' => 'up -y',
				 );

foreach ($mysites as $site) {
  
  echo "\n**********************************************************\n";
  echo "       START UPDATING SITE: ".$site;
  echo "\n**********************************************************\n";
  
  echo 'Start in directory: '.getcwd() . "\n";
  chdir($mypath.'/'.$site);
  echo 'Working in directory: '.getcwd() . "\n\n";

  // Start Drush Update Process
  
  foreach ($commands as $steps => $command) {
    echo "   ".$steps."\n";
    echo "------------------------------------------------------\n";
    $output = shell_exec($drush_path.' '.$command);
    echo $output."\n";  
  }
  
  // Remove unwanted files
  
  foreach ($unwanted as $filename) {
    
    if (file_exists($filename)) {
      $output = shell_exec('rm '.$filename);
      echo "File: '$file' was removed.\n";
    }
  }

  echo "\n\n";
  chdir($mypath);
  echo 'Back to my base directory: '.getcwd() . "\n";

  echo "\n**********************************************************\n";
  echo "       END UPDATING SITE: ".$site;
  echo "\n**********************************************************\n";

}


?>

It is a good practice if only the owner can execute the file and place the file outside the web root so that it can not be access from the internet. To run the file in your shell type:

php msu.php

or sudo it

sudo php msu.php

or check a shell shortcut

alias msu-drush="php ~/PATH-TO-MSU-FILE/msu.php"

If you have any comments or suggestions please post them below.

Thank you,

Emil Acosta