Console applications

Yii has full featured support of console. Console application structure in Yii is very similar to web application. It consists of one or more yii\console\Controller (often referred to as commands). Each has one or more actions.

Usage

You can execute controller action using the following syntax:

yii <route> [--option1=value1 --option2=value2 ... argument1 argument2 ...]

For example, yii\console\controllers\MigrateController::actionCreate() with yii\console\controllers\MigrateController::$migrationTable set can be called from command line like the following:

yii migrate/create --migrationTable=my_migration

In the above yii is console application entry script described below.

Entry script

Console application entry script is typically called yii, located in your application root directory and contains code like the following:

#!/usr/bin/env php
<?php
/**
 * Yii console bootstrap file.
 *
 * @link http://www.yiiframework.com/
 * @copyright Copyright (c) 2008 Yii Software LLC
 * @license http://www.yiiframework.com/license/
 */

defined('YII_DEBUG') or define('YII_DEBUG', true);

// fcgi doesn't have STDIN and STDOUT defined by default
defined('STDIN') or define('STDIN', fopen('php://stdin', 'r'));
defined('STDOUT') or define('STDOUT', fopen('php://stdout', 'w'));

require(__DIR__ . '/vendor/autoload.php');
require(__DIR__ . '/vendor/yiisoft/yii2/Yii.php');

$config = require(__DIR__ . '/config/console.php');

$application = new yii\console\Application($config);
$exitCode = $application->run();
exit($exitCode);

This script is a part of your application so you're free to adjust it. The YII_DEBUG constant can be set false if you do not want to see stack trace on error and want to improve overall performance. In both basic and advanced application templates it is enabled to provide more developer-friendly environment.

Configuration

As can be seen in the code above, console application uses its own config files named console.php. In this file, you should specify how to configure various application components and properties.

If your Web application and the console application share a lot of configurations, you may consider moving the common part into a separate file, and include this file in both of the application configurations, just as what is done in the "advanced" application template.

Sometimes, you may want to run a console command using an application configuration that is different from the one specified in the entry script. For example, you may want to use the yii migrate command to upgrade your test databases which are configured in each individual test suite. To do so, simply specify the custom application configuration file via the appconfig option, like the following,

yii <route> --appconfig=path/to/config.php ...

Creating your own console commands

Console Controller and Action

A console command is defined as a controller class extending from yii\console\Controller. In the controller class, you define one or several actions that correspond to the sub-commands of the command. Within each action, you write code to implement certain tasks for that particular sub-command.

When running a command, you need to specify the route to the corresponding controller action. For example, the route migrate/create specifies the sub-command corresponding to the yii\console\controllers\MigrateController::actionCreate() action method. If a route does not contain an action ID, the default action will be executed.

Options

By overriding the yii\console\Controller::options($id) method, you can specify options that are available to a console command (controller/actionID). The method should return a list of public property names of the controller class. When running a command, you may specify the value of an option using the syntax --OptionName=OptionValue. This will assign OptionValue to the OptionName property of the controller class.

If the default value of an option is of array type, then if you set this option while running the command, the option value will be converted into an array by splitting the input string by commas.

Arguments

Besides options, a command can also receive arguments. The arguments will be passed as the parameters to the action method corresponding to the requested sub-command. The first argument corresponds to the first parameter, the second corresponds to the second, and so on. If there are not enough arguments are provided, the corresponding parameters may take the declared default values, or if they do not have default value the command will exit with an error.

You may use array type hint to indicate that an argument should be treated as an array. The array will be generated by splitting the input string by commas.

The follow examples show how to declare arguments:

class ExampleController extends \yii\console\Controller
{
	// The command "yii example/create test" will call "actionCreate('test')"
	public function actionCreate($name) { ... }

	// The command "yii example/index city" will call "actionIndex('city', 'name')"
	// The command "yii example/index city id" will call "actionIndex('city', 'id')"
	public function actionIndex($category, $order = 'name') { ... }

	// The command "yii example/add test" will call "actionAdd(['test'])"
	// The command "yii example/add test1,test2" will call "actionAdd(['test1', 'test2'])"
	public function actionAdd(array $name) { ... }
}

Exit Code

Using exit codes is the best practice of console application development. If a command returns 0 it means everything is OK. If it is a number greater than zero, we have an error and the number returned is the error code that may be interpreted to find out details about the error. For example 1 could stand generally for an unknown error and all codes above are declared for specific cases such as input errors, missing files, and so forth.

To have your console command return with an exit code you simply return an integer in the controller action method:

public function actionIndex()
{
	if (/* some problem */) {
		echo "A problem occured!\n";
		return 1;
	}
	// do something
	return 0;
}

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