README

A trivial PHP framework for command line apps.

This is primarily useful when you have a bunch of discrete command-line applications in a PHP codebase. It keeps things out of the global namespace, especially functions called "main," without a lot of boilerplate code.

Installation

You can require it directly with Composer:

composer require jdwx/app

Or download the source from GitHub: https://github.com/jdwx/app.git

Requirements

This framework requires PHP 8.2 or later. It might work with earlier versions of PHP 8, but it has not been tested with them.

Usage

To use this framework, create a class that extends the Application class and implements a protected main() method. The main() method should return an integer, which will be the exit status of the process. If you do not want the application to terminate the process after the main() function returns, you can override the exit() method.

The Application class takes advantage of the jdwx/args library to provide robust type-safe handling of command-line arguments. It also supports the PSR LoggerInterface standard.

require 'vendor/autoload.php';


(new class( $argv ) extends \JDWX\App\Application {

    protected function main() : int {
        echo "Hello, world!\n";
        if ( $this->args->empty() ) {
            echo "You didn't enter anything.\n";
        } else {
            echo "You entered: ", $this->args->endWithString(), "\n";
        }
        return 0;
    }

})->run();

Stability

This framework is considered stable and is used in production code. However, because it is used primarily for interactive tasks, it is difficult to fully test. It is recommended that you test your applications thoroughly.

History

This framework was refactored out of a larger codebase and first released as part of the jdwx/cli framework before quickly being separated into its own standalone module in 2024 for the benefit of command-line applications that are not REPL-style interactive tools.