How to Scan a Google Cloud Storage File for Viruses & Malware in PHP

Scanning suspicious files in Google Cloud Storage helps reveal hidden virus and malware threats. Using complementary PHP code examples, we can scan files with ease.

We’ll be calling a free virus & malware scanning API using the PHP code examples below. This scan references 17 million+ virus & malware signatures and leverages predictive threat scanning techniques.

Before we copy code to make our API call, let’s first gather the below information from our Google Cloud Storage account:

1. Bucket Name
2. Object Name (file name; if it contains Unicode characters, please base64 encode the file and prepend with ‘base64’)
3. JSON Credential File (service account credential for Google Cloud Storage in a JSON file)

Now we can install the PHP client using Composer by executing the following command from the command line:

composer require cloudmersive/cloudmersive_virusscan_api_client

Next, we can call the virus & malware scanning function using the following code:

<?php
require_once(__DIR__ . '/vendor/autoload.php');

// Configure API key authorization: Apikey
$config = Swagger\Client\Configuration::getDefaultConfiguration()->setApiKey('Apikey', 'YOUR_API_KEY');



$apiInstance = new Swagger\Client\Api\ScanCloudStorageApi(
    
    
    new GuzzleHttp\Client(),
    $config
);
$bucket_name = "bucket_name_example"; // string | Name of the bucket in Google Cloud Storage
$object_name = "object_name_example"; // string | Name of the object or file in Google Cloud Storage.  If the object name contains Unicode characters, you must base64 encode the object name and prepend it with 'base64:', such as: 'base64:6ZWV6ZWV6ZWV6ZWV6ZWV6ZWV'.
$json_credential_file = "/path/to/inputfile"; // \SplFileObject | Service Account credential for Google Cloud stored in a JSON file.

try {
    $result = $apiInstance->scanCloudStorageScanGcpStorageFile($bucket_name, $object_name, $json_credential_file);
    print_r($result);
} catch (Exception $e) {
    echo 'Exception when calling ScanCloudStorageApi->scanCloudStorageScanGcpStorageFile: ', $e->getMessage(), PHP_EOL;
}
?>

To authorize our API calls for free, we’ll just need a free Cloudmersive API key (this allows a limit of 800 API calls per month with zero commitments).

That’s all there is to it — now we can easily scan individual Google Cloud Storage files for viruses and malware in PHP.