Console Commands

• Introduction
• Script setup
• Usage
  • Container definition
  • Command line call
• Composer script integration

Introduction

To execute a function of a PHP class that is instantiated by the container via console commands, a library such as symfony/console can be help.

But simple use-cases can be covered by a little PHP script that bootstraps the application, retrieves the container and the required class instance from it and calls the requested function.

Script setup

File: bin/console.php

<?php

// Boot the application
$app = require __DIR__ . '/../config/bootstrap.php';

/** Get the container instance @var Psr\Container\ContainerInterface $container */
$container = $app->getContainer();

// The $argv variable is an array that contains the command-line arguments passed to the script.
// The first element of the $argv array is always the name of the script itself ('bin/console.php').
// array_shift($argv) removes this first element that is not relevant here.
array_shift($argv);

// The now first parameter after the script name that was removed is the class name.
// The second element in the $argv array is the function name.
[$containerKey, $functionName] = $argv;

// Retrieve the instance corresponding to the $containerKey form the container.
$objectInstance = $container->get($containerKey);

// The call_user_func_array function is used to call the specified function on the retrieved instance.
// In this case, it's calling the function specified by $functionName on the object instance.
// The second parameter is an empty array, which means no parameters are passed to the function.
call_user_func_array([$objectInstance, $functionName], []);

Usage

Container definition

The class to be used for the command line should be defined with a string key and not the fully qualified class name to shorten the command line call.

For example, the SqlSchemaGenerator class from the samuelgfeller/test-traits library can be defined with the container key 'SqlSchemaGenerator' and instantiated as shown below.
More information on this use-case: Generating the schema file.

File: config/container.php

return [
    // ...
   
    'SqlSchemaGenerator' => function (ContainerInterface $container) {
        return new \TestTraits\Console\SqlSchemaGenerator(
            $container->get(PDO::class),
            // Schema output folder
            $container->get('settings')['root_dir'] . '/resources/schema'
        );
    },
];

Command line call

The bin/console.php script can be used to call the generateMySqlSchema() function from the SqlSchemaGenerator class.
The first parameter is the container key which returns the class instance containing the function of the second parameter:

php bin/console.php SqlSchemaGenerator generateMySqlSchema

Composer script integration

For added convenience, this command can be integrated into the composer scripts and be executed under an alias.

File: composer.json

"scripts": {
    "schema:generate": "php bin/console.php SqlSchemaGenerator generateMySqlSchema"
}

The command can then be executed like this:

composer schema:generate