Using Console Commands, Shortcuts and Built-in Commands

In addition to the options you specify for your commands, there are some built-in options as well as a couple of built-in commands for the console component.

Note

These examples assume you have added a file app/console to run at the cli:

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        #!/usr/bin/env php
# app/console
<?php

use Symfony\Component\Console\Application;

$application = new Application();
// ...
$application->run();
    

Built-in Commands

There is a built-in command list which outputs all the standard options and the registered commands:

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        $ php app/console list
    

You can get the same output by not running any command as well

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        $ php app/console
    

The help command lists the help information for the specified command. For example, to get the help for the list command:

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        $ php app/console help list
    

Running help without specifying a command will list the global options:

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        $ php app/console help
    

Global Options

You can get help information for any command with the --help option. To get help for the list command:

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        $ php app/console list --help
$ php app/console list -h
    

You can suppress output with:

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        $ php app/console list --quiet
$ php app/console list -q
    

You can get more verbose messages (if this is supported for a command) with:

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        $ php app/console list --verbose
$ php app/console list -v
    

If you set the optional arguments to give your application a name and version:

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        $application = new Application('Acme Console Application', '1.2');
    

then you can use:

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        $ php app/console list --version
$ php app/console list -V
    

to get this information output:

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        Acme Console Application version 1.2
    

If you do not provide both arguments then it will just output:

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        console tool
    

You can force turning on ANSI output coloring with:

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        $ php app/console list --ansi
    

or turn it off with:

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        $ php app/console list --no-ansi
    

You can suppress any interactive questions from the command you are running with:

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        $ php app/console list --no-interaction
$ php app/console list -n
    

Shortcut Syntax

You do not have to type out the full command names. You can just type the shortest unambiguous name to run a command. So if there are non-clashing commands, then you can run help like this:

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        $ php app/console h
    

If you have commands using : to namespace commands then you just have to type the shortest unambiguous text for each part. If you have created the demo:greet as shown in The Console Component then you can run it with:

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        $ php app/console d:g Fabien
    

If you enter a short command that's ambiguous (i.e. there are more than one command that match), then no command will be run and some suggestions of the possible commands to choose from will be output.

This work, including the code samples, is licensed under a Creative Commons BY-SA 3.0 license.