The PHP SSH Connection package provides an elegant syntax to connect to SSH servers and execute commands. It supports both password and public-private keypair authentication, and can easily capture command output and errors.
You can install the PHP SSH Connection package by running the following Composer command.
composer require divineomega/php-ssh-connectionSee the following basic usage instructions.
$connection = (new SSHConnection())
            ->to('test.rebex.net')
            ->onPort(22)
            ->as('demo')
            ->withPassword('password')
         // ->withPrivateKey($privateKeyPath)
         // ->timeout(0)
            ->connect();
$command = $connection->run('echo "Hello world!"');
$command->getOutput();  // 'Hello World'
$command->getError();   // ''
$connection->upload($localPath, $remotePath);
$connection->download($remotePath, $localPath);For security, you can fingerprint the remote server and verify the fingerprint remains the same upon each subsequent connection.
$fingerprint = $connection->fingerprint();
if ($newConnection->fingerprint() != $fingerprint) {
    throw new Exception('Fingerprint does not match!');
}If you wish, you can specify the type of fingerprint you wish to retrieve.
$md5Fingerprint  = $connection->fingerprint(SSHConnection::FINGERPRINT_MD5); // default
$sha1Fingerprint = $connection->fingerprint(SSHConnection::FINGERPRINT_SHA1);