Building for the PHP Command Line Interface

Executing PHP from the command line enables us to interact with our applications in new and interesting ways: from performing site maintenance to scaffolding new projects, CLI tools like WP-CLI, Artisan, and Drush make it easy to interface with our code without ever opening a browser.

Attendees will be introduced to popular PHP CLI tools and their default capabilities. We'll discuss characteristics of good CLI scripts, strong use-cases for writing custom commands, then write several CLI programs across different platforms.

:sparkles: View slides :sparkles:

This presentation also has a companion repository, full of executable examples from this presentation.

Demonstrated Tools

• Symfony Console Component
• PHP-CLI Tools
• CLImate

Platform-specific CLI tools

• WP-CLI
• Laravel Artisan
• Drush
• Joomlatools Console

Additional Resources

• Building PHP Daemons and Long Running Processes - Talk from php[tek] 2015 by Tim Lytle
• Writing WP-CLI Commands That Work! - Sister talk focused on writing WP-CLI commands
• What are Exit Codes in Linux? - Explanation of standard exit codes and their meanings
• Understanding Exit Codes and How to Use Them in Bash Scripts - Article by Benjamin Cane
• Flysystem - Popular package for filesystem operations across environments
• Cropping and Resizing Animated Gifs with Gifsicle - Blog post explaining how to create animated thumbnails for gifs, which relies on calling Gifsicle via passthru()

Presentation History

• php[tek] 2024 — April 24, 2024 (Joind.in, PDF)
• Midwest PHP 2019 — March 8, 2019 (Joind.in, PDF)
• WavePHP 2018 — September 20, 2018 (Joind.in, PDF)
• Southeast PHP - August 17, 2018 (Joind.in, PDF)
• PHPDetroit - July 28, 2018 (Joind.in, PDF)
• php[tek] 2018 - May 31, 2018 (Joind.in, PDF)
• Music City Code 2017 - June 3, 2017
• CodeMash 2017 - January 13, 2017
• Nomad PHP (EU) – December 15, 2016 (Joind.in)
• php[tek] 2016 – May 27, 2016 (Joind.in)
• Columbus PHP Meetup – April 13, 2016 (Joind.in)