symfony/src/Symfony/Component/Console

Console Component

Even if we are talking about a web framework, having some tools to manage your project from the command line is nice. In Symfony2, we use the console to generate CRUDs, update the database schema, etc. It's not required, but it is really convenient and it can boost your productivity a lot.

This example shows how to create a command line tool very easily:

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

$console = new Application();
$console
    ->register('ls')
    ->setDefinition(array(
        new InputArgument('dir', InputArgument::REQUIRED, 'Directory name'),
    ))
    ->setDescription('Displays the files in the given directory')
    ->setCode(function (InputInterface $input, OutputInterface $output) {
        $dir = $input->getArgument('dir');

        $output->writeln(sprintf('Dir listing for <info>%s</info>', $dir));
    })
;

$console->run();

With only 10 lines of code or so, you have access to a lot of features like output coloring, input and output abstractions (so that you can easily unit-test your commands), validation, automatic help messages, and a lot more. It's really powerful.

Resources

Unit tests:

https://github.com/symfony/symfony/tree/master/tests/Symfony/Tests/Component/Console