How to Call a Command from a Controller

Warning: You are browsing the documentation for Symfony 4.x, which is no longer maintained.

Read the updated version of this page for Symfony 7.2 (the current stable version).

The Console component documentation covers how to create a console command. This article covers how to use a console command directly from your controller.

You may have the need to call some function that is only available in a console command. Usually, you should refactor the command and move some logic into a service that can be reused in the controller. However, when the command is part of a third-party library, you don't want to modify or duplicate their code. Instead, you can run the command directly from the controller.

Caution

In comparison with a direct call from the console, calling a command from a controller has a slight performance impact because of the request stack overhead.

Imagine you want to run the debug:twig from inside your controller:

        1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
        // src/Controller/DebugTwigController.php
namespace App\Controller;

use Symfony\Bundle\FrameworkBundle\Console\Application;
use Symfony\Bundle\FrameworkBundle\Controller\AbstractController;
use Symfony\Component\Console\Input\ArrayInput;
use Symfony\Component\Console\Output\BufferedOutput;
use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Response;
use Symfony\Component\HttpKernel\KernelInterface;

class DebugTwigController extends AbstractController
{
    public function debugTwig(KernelInterface $kernel): Response
    {
        $application = new Application($kernel);
        $application->setAutoExit(false);

        $input = new ArrayInput([
            'command' => 'debug:twig',
            // (optional) define the value of command arguments
            'fooArgument' => 'barValue',
            // (optional) pass options to the command
            '--bar' => 'fooValue',
        ]);

        // You can use NullOutput() if you don't need the output
        $output = new BufferedOutput();
        $application->run($input, $output);

        // return the output, don't use if you used NullOutput()
        $content = $output->fetch();

        // return new Response(""), if you used NullOutput()
        return new Response($content);
    }
}
    

Showing Colorized Command Output

By telling the BufferedOutput it is decorated via the second parameter, it will return the Ansi color-coded content. The SensioLabs AnsiToHtml converter can be used to convert this to colorful HTML.

First, require the package:

        1
        $ composer require sensiolabs/ansi-to-html
    

Now, use it in your controller:

        1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
        // src/Controller/DebugTwigController.php
namespace App\Controller;

use SensioLabs\AnsiConverter\AnsiToHtmlConverter;
use Symfony\Component\Console\Output\BufferedOutput;
use Symfony\Component\Console\Output\OutputInterface;
use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Response;
// ...

class DebugTwigController extends AbstractController
{
    public function sendSpool(int $messages = 10): Response
    {
        // ...
        $output = new BufferedOutput(
            OutputInterface::VERBOSITY_NORMAL,
            true // true for decorated
        );
        // ...

        // return the output
        $converter = new AnsiToHtmlConverter();
        $content = $output->fetch();

        return new Response($converter->convert($content));
    }
}
    

The AnsiToHtmlConverter can also be registered as a Twig Extension, and supports optional themes.

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

TOC

Version