Command Line Applications

CLI applications are executed from the command line. They are useful to create cron jobs, scripts, command utilities and more.

Structure

A minimal structure of a CLI application will look like this:

• app/config/config.php
• app/tasks/MainTask.php
• app/cli.php <– main bootstrap file

Creating a Bootstrap

As in regular MVC applications, a bootstrap file is used to bootstrap the application. Instead of the index.php bootstrapper in web applications, we use a cli.php file for bootstrapping the application.

Below is a sample bootstrap that is being used for this example.

use Phalcon\DI\FactoryDefault\CLI as CliDI,
     Phalcon\CLI\Console as ConsoleApp;

 define('VERSION', '1.0.0');

 //Using the CLI factory default services container
 $di = new CliDI();

 // Define path to application directory
 defined('APPLICATION_PATH')
 || define('APPLICATION_PATH', realpath(dirname(__FILE__)));

 /**
  * Register the autoloader and tell it to register the tasks directory
  */
 $loader = new \Phalcon\Loader();
 $loader->registerDirs(
     array(
         APPLICATION_PATH . '/tasks'
     )
 );
 $loader->register();

 // Load the configuration file (if any)
 if(is_readable(APPLICATION_PATH . '/config/config.php')) {
     $config = include APPLICATION_PATH . '/config/config.php';
     $di->set('config', $config);
 }

 //Create a console application
 $console = new ConsoleApp();
 $console->setDI($di);

 /**
 * Process the console arguments
 */
 $arguments = array();
 foreach($argv as $k => $arg) {
     if($k == 1) {
         $arguments['task'] = $arg;
     } elseif($k == 2) {
         $arguments['action'] = $arg;
     } elseif($k >= 3) {
        $arguments['params'][] = $arg;
     }
 }

 // define global constants for the current task and action
 define('CURRENT_TASK', (isset($argv[1]) ? $argv[1] : null));
 define('CURRENT_ACTION', (isset($argv[2]) ? $argv[2] : null));

 try {
     // handle incoming arguments
     $console->handle($arguments);
 }
 catch (\Phalcon\Exception $e) {
     echo $e->getMessage();
     exit(255);
 }

This piece of code can be run using:

$ php app/cli.php

This is the default task and the default action

Tasks

Tasks work similar to controllers. Any CLI application needs at least a mainTask and a mainAction and every task needs to have a mainAction which will run if no action is given explicitly.

Below is an example of the app/tasks/MainTask.php file

class MainTask extends \Phalcon\CLI\Task
{
    public function mainAction() {
         echo "\nThis is the default task and the default action \n";
    }
}

Processing action parameters

It’s possible to pass parameters to actions, the code for this is already present in the sample bootstrap.

If you run the the application with the following parameters and action:

class MainTask extends \Phalcon\CLI\Task
{
    public function mainAction() {
         echo "\nThis is the default task and the default action \n";
    }

    /**
    * @param array $params
    */
   public function testAction(array $params) {
       echo sprintf('hello %s', $params[0]) . PHP_EOL;
       echo sprintf('best regards, %s', $params[1]) . PHP_EOL;
   }
}

$ php app/cli.php main test world universe

hello world
best regards, universe

Running tasks in a chain

It’s also possible to run tasks in a chain if it’s required. To accomplish this you must add the console itself to the DI:

$di->setShared('console', $console);

try {
    // handle incoming arguments
    $console->handle($arguments);
}

Then you can use the console inside of any task. Below is an example of a modified MainTask.php:

class MainTask extends \Phalcon\CLI\Task
{
    public function mainAction() {
        echo "\nThis is the default task and the default action \n";

        $this->console->handle(array(
           'task' => 'main',
           'action' => 'test'
        ));
    }

    public function testAction() {
        echo '\nI will get printed too!\n';
    }
}

However, it’s a better idea to extend \Phalcon\CLI\Task and implement this kind of logic there.