[Proposal] Tinker Usability

[johnnygreen]

Hello,

Using the Tinker command is sometimes frustrating. I find that making the below modifications makes its use more natural.

It would be nice to give an option for var_dump being the standard behavior, kind of like the ruby / rails REPL.

artisan tinker --dump

Illuminate/Foundation/Console/TinkerCommand.php
/**
 * Execute the console command.
 *
 * @return void
 */
public function fire()
{
  $input = $this->prompt();

  while ($input != 'quit')
  {
    try
    {
      if (starts_with($input, 'dump '))
      {
        $input = 'var_dump('.substr($input, 5).');';
      } 
      else if ($this->input->getOption('dump'))
      {
        $input = 'var_dump('.$input.');';
      }

      eval($input);
    }
    catch (\Exception $e)
    {
      $this->error($e->getMessage());
    }

    $input = $this->prompt();
  }
}

/**
 * Get the console command options.
 *
 * @return array
 */
protected function getOptions()
{
  return array(
    array('dump', 'd', InputOption::VALUE_NONE, 'Dump the contents of each input by default', false)
  );
}

Also, I propose modification of the Tinker command to allow for a 'clear' command. This would clear the screen like 'clear' in bash or 'cls' on windows.

Illuminate/Foundation/Console/TinkerCommand.php
/**
 * Execute the console command.
 *
 * @return void
 */
public function fire()
{
  $input = $this->prompt();

  while ($input != 'quit')
  {
    if ($input == 'clear' or $input == 'cls')
    {
      passthru($input);
      $input = $this->prompt();
      continue;
    }

    try
    {
      if (starts_with($input, 'dump '))
      {
        $input = 'var_dump('.substr($input, 5).');';
      }

      eval($input);
    }
    catch (\Exception $e)
    {
      $this->error($e->getMessage());
    }

    $input = $this->prompt();
  }
}

[franzliedke]

Before we start implementing a full-blown REPL, maybe we should use something like Boris instead. But I believe there's a package, so it might not be necessary...

[johnnygreen]

I completely agree that Boris is much better.

Now let's talk about Tinker. It comes with Laravel by default and could use a little love so we don't always throw it under the bus. If we are going to do that, we might as well just scratch it from existence.

I've modified the issue title to be "Tinker Usability" instead of "Additional Tinker Functionality". This isn't additional functionality as much as it's purpose is to make it usable.

Why not have a container for Boris, like Taylor did with Monolog?

[WMeldon]

Not sure what the existing compatibility with Windows is for artisan commands, but Boris has pretty hard POSIX requirements from what I understand.

It's an absolutely excellent REPL though.

[taylorotwell]

Yep, Boris doesn't work at all on Windows.

Sent with Mailbird [http://www.getmailbird.com/?utm_source=signature&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=SentWithMailbird_Normal]
On 9/3/2013 7:55:23 AM, Will Meldon notifications@github.com wrote:
Not sure what the existing compatibility with Windows is for artisan commands, but Boris has pretty hard POSIX requirements from what I understand.
It's an absolutely excellent REPL though.
—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub [https://github.com//issues/2215#issuecomment-23710107].

[robclancy]

@taylorotwell I'm not seeing the issue

[franzliedke]

In that case I guess we should indeed work on making the tinker command better. :)

[robclancy]

I vote that if boris is this almighty version for mac/linux then use it and fallback to the current one for windows.

[franzliedke]

Hmm, that sounds complicated. We could also use another REPL like this one. It doesn't use forking, but also cannot handle fatal errors, which is the major advantage of Boris.

[taylorotwell]

Boris is nice but we need to convince the maintainer to remove the composer dependencies on "posix" etc. That keeps Boris from being installed as an "optional" piece of a larger framework. I'll raise a pull request for him.

[taylorotwell]

Boris is integrated on 4.1.