Building a single Command Application

Warning: You are browsing the documentation for Symfony 4.0, which is no longer maintained.

Read the updated version of this page for Symfony 6.2 (the current stable version).

Building a single Command Application

When building a command line tool, you may not need to provide several commands. In such case, having to pass the command name each time is tedious. Fortunately, it is possible to remove this need by declaring a single command application:

        1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
        #!/usr/bin/env php
<?php
require __DIR__.'/vendor/autoload.php';

use Symfony\Component\Console\Application;
use Symfony\Component\Console\Input\InputArgument;
use Symfony\Component\Console\Input\InputInterface;
use Symfony\Component\Console\Input\InputOption;
use Symfony\Component\Console\Output\OutputInterface;

(new Application('echo', '1.0.0'))
  ->register('echo')
      ->addArgument('foo', InputArgument::OPTIONAL, 'The directory')
      ->addOption('bar', null, InputOption::VALUE_REQUIRED)
      ->setCode(function(InputInterface $input, OutputInterface $output) {
          // output arguments and options
      })
  ->getApplication()
  ->setDefaultCommand('echo', true) // Single command application
  ->run();
    

The method setDefaultCommand() accepts a boolean as second parameter. If true, the command echo will then always be used, without having to pass its name.

Of course, you can still register a command as usual:

        1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
        #!/usr/bin/env php
<?php
require __DIR__.'/vendor/autoload.php';

use Acme\Command\DefaultCommand;
use Symfony\Component\Console\Application;

$application = new Application('echo', '1.0.0');
$command = new DefaultCommand();

$application->add($command);

$application->setDefaultCommand($command->getName(), true);
$application->run();
    