How to Define Commands as Services

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By default, Symfony will take a look in the Command directory of each bundle and automatically register your commands. If a command extends the ContainerAwareCommand, Symfony will even inject the container. While making life easier, this has some limitations:

  • Your command must live in the Command directory;
  • There's no way to conditionally register your command based on the environment or availability of some dependencies;
  • You can't access the container in the configure() method (because setContainer() hasn't been called yet);
  • You can't use the same class to create many commands (i.e. each with different configuration).

To solve these problems, you can register your command as a service and tag it with console.command:

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# app/config/services.yml
services:
    app.command.my_command:
        class: AppBundle\Command\MyCommand
        tags:
            - { name: console.command }

Using Dependencies and Parameters to Set Default Values for Options

Imagine you want to provide a default value for the name option. You could pass one of the following as the 5th argument of addOption():

  • a hardcoded string;
  • a container parameter (e.g. something from parameters.yml);
  • a value computed by a service (e.g. a repository).

By extending ContainerAwareCommand, only the first is possible, because you can't access the container inside the configure() method. Instead, inject any parameter or service you need into the constructor. For example, suppose you store the default value in some %command.default_name% parameter:

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// src/AppBundle/Command/GreetCommand.php
namespace AppBundle\Command;

use Symfony\Component\Console\Command\Command;
use Symfony\Component\Console\Input\InputInterface;
use Symfony\Component\Console\Input\InputOption;
use Symfony\Component\Console\Output\OutputInterface;

class GreetCommand extends Command
{
    protected $defaultName;

    public function __construct($defaultName)
    {
        $this->defaultName = $defaultName;

        parent::__construct();
    }

    protected function configure()
    {
        // try to avoid work here (e.g. database query)
        // this method is *always* called - see warning below

        $this
            ->setName('demo:greet')
            ->setDescription('Greet someone')
            ->addOption(
                'name',
                '-n',
                InputOption::VALUE_REQUIRED,
                'Who do you want to greet?',
                $this->defaultName
            )
        ;
    }

    protected function execute(InputInterface $input, OutputInterface $output)
    {
        $name = $input->getOption('name');

        $output->writeln($name);
    }
}

Now, just update the arguments of your service configuration like normal to inject the command.default_name parameter:

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# app/config/config.yml
parameters:
    command.default_name: Javier

services:
    app.command.my_command:
        class: AppBundle\Command\MyCommand
        arguments: ["%command.default_name%"]
        tags:
            - { name: console.command }

Great, you now have a dynamic default value!

Caution

Be careful not to actually do any work in configure (e.g. make database queries), as your code will be run, even if you're using the console to execute a different command.

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