Apple’s Server.app offering has a strong command line interface that is usually tied to the serveradmin command verb. This is great when you want to start or stop the web service, as well as view all of the Apache settings:

sudo serveradmin start web
sudo serveradmin stop web
sudo serveradmin settings web

But the thing I really, really wanted to do with serveradmin was turn on the PHP Web Application, because Munkireport-PHP relies on it being running, and if serveradmin can’t engage the PHP application engine, I was going to be unable to control it programmatically, or view its status with a check.

I submitted a bug to Apple that it wasn’t available as part of serveradmin, and I fully expected it to be closed with “functions as intended.”

And it was!

But there was a pleasant note at the bottom below:

You can enable/disable PHP from the command line, just not with serveradmin. The supported way is:

sudo webappctl [start|stop] com.apple.webapp.php

This, of course, got me reading the (ample) manage for webappctl.

webappctl recognizes the start or stop argument to activate or de-activate the webapp specified by webapp-name.  If the webapp-name is specified as "-", the start/stop/status action applies to all webapps represented with a plist present in /etc/apache2/webapps/.  In the case of a restart "-" action, the set of running webapps are stopped, then started. (In the case of a restart for a specific webapp, the webapp will be stopped, then started, even if it was not running before.)  If the status argument is specified, a list of enabled webapps is displayed. The tree[s] argument displays the hierarchy of webapps declared by the requiredWebApps property.  The optional vhost-name argument specifies the name of the virtual host though which the webapp is to be proxied.  If omitted the default wild-card virtual host is used.

This means that you can easily start or stop the PHP and Python web applications programmatically with the following commands:

sudo webappctl start com.apple.webapp.php
sudo webappctl stop com.apple.webapp.php

sudo webappctl start com.apple.webapp.wsgi
sudo webappctl stop com.apple.webapp.wsgi

As well as get their status from the command line:

vm1011:apache2 ladmin$ sudo webappctl status -
web:webAppState:_array_index:0:virtualHostName = "-"
web:webAppState:_array_index:0:vhid = "-"
web:webAppState:_array_index:0:state = "RUNNING"
web:webAppState:_array_index:0:webAppName = "com.apple.webapp.php"
web:webAppState:_array_index:1:virtualHostName = ""
web:webAppState:_array_index:1:vhid = "127.0.0.1:34543_"
web:webAppState:_array_index:1:state = "RUNNING"
web:webAppState:_array_index:1:webAppName = "com.apple.webapp.wsgi"
web:webAppState:_array_index:2:virtualHostName = ""
web:webAppState:_array_index:2:vhid = "127.0.0.1:34580_"
web:webAppState:_array_index:2:state = "RUNNING"
web:webAppState:_array_index:2:webAppName = "com.apple.webapp.wsgi"

OR

vm1011:apache2 ladmin$ sudo webappctl status -
web:webAppState:_array_index:0:virtualHostName = "-"
web:webAppState:_array_index:0:vhid = "-"
web:webAppState:_array_index:0:state = "RUNNING"
web:webAppState:_array_index:0:webAppName = "com.apple.webapp.php"

This opens the door further for a version of Munki in a Box that could configure Server.app if it isn’t already, including the activation of the web service and the PHP web application service. This is good news.