How to Color and Style the Console Output

Using Color Styles

Whenever you output text, you can surround the text with tags to color its output. For example:

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// green text
$output->writeln('<info>foo</info>');

// yellow text
$output->writeln('<comment>foo</comment>');

// black text on a cyan background
$output->writeln('<question>foo</question>');

// white text on a red background
$output->writeln('<error>foo</error>');

The closing tag can be replaced by </>, which revokes all formatting options established by the last opened tag.

It is possible to define your own styles using the OutputFormatterStyle class:

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use Symfony\Component\Console\Formatter\OutputFormatterStyle;

// ...
$outputStyle = new OutputFormatterStyle('red', 'yellow', array('bold', 'blink'));
$output->getFormatter()->setStyle('fire', $outputStyle);

$output->writeln('<fire>foo</fire>');

Available foreground and background colors are: black, red, green, yellow, blue, magenta, cyan and white.

And available options are: bold, underscore, blink, reverse (enables the "reverse video" mode where the background and foreground colors are swapped) and conceal (sets the foreground color to transparent, making the typed text invisible - although it can be selected and copied; this option is commonly used when asking the user to type sensitive information).

You can also set these colors and options directly inside the tagname:

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// green text
$output->writeln('<fg=green>foo</>');

// black text on a cyan background
$output->writeln('<fg=black;bg=cyan>foo</>');

// bold text on a yellow background
$output->writeln('<bg=yellow;options=bold>foo</>');