trigger node js file

Assuming you're on Unix-based OS:

You can run shell commands via the exec() function:

// in php file// to start the script exec("node myscript.js &", $output);

$output becomes an array of each line of output, so you can see what the process id is. Then you would use that process id to kill the script:

exec("kill " . $processid);

php node.js command

I would avoid any direct interaction with the shell. It would probably be the safest, to solve it this way:

implement some overall "service"-script, that launches the user-node-app and keeps it running (something like https://github.com/isaacs/node-supervisor)
Make it, so it automatically reboots on changes of either the relevant files or a database-entry
With the user triggering a reboot, add a flag (timestamp?) to the database-entry or file that is watched by the reboot-script. It then will reboot the node.js-app/script.

CodeHunter