Fun with Symfony's Console Component

One of the best parts of using Symfony's Console component is all the output control you have to the CLI: colors, tables, progress bars etc. Usually, you create a command to do this. But what you may not know is that you can get to all this goodness in a single, flat PHP file

Using ConsoleOutput in a Flat File

Suppose you've started a new project and want to write a CLI script with some added flare. First, just grab the symfony/console component:

composer require symfony/console

Next, open up a flat php file, require the autoloader and create a new ConsoleOutput object:

// print_pretty.php

require __DIR__.'/vendor/autoload.php';

use Symfony\Component\Console\Output\ConsoleOutput;
use Symfony\Component\Console\Formatter\OutputFormatter;

$output = new ConsoleOutput();
$output->setFormatter(new OutputFormatter(true));

$output->writeln(
    'The <comment>console</comment> component is'
    .' <bg=magenta;fg=cyan;option=blink>sweet!</>'
);

The ConsoleOutput class is the heart of all the styling control. And when used with the OutputFormatter, you're able to print text with built-in styles for <comment>, <info>, <error> and <question>. Or, you can control the background and foreground colors manually.

Ok, let's run this from the command line!

php print_pretty.php

That's right, it's blinking. You can also wrap up your custom colorings and options (like our blinking cyan section) into a new style (e.g. <annoying_blinking>). See OutputFormatter and OutputFormatterStyle for details.

How about Table and a Progress Bar?

I'm so glad you asked! With the ConsoleOutput object, using any of the other Console Helpers is easy! Let's build a table with a progress bar that shows how things are going:

// print_pretty.php

use Symfony\Component\Console\Helper\ProgressBar;
use Symfony\Component\Console\Helper\Table;

// ... all the other code from before

$rows = 10;
$progressBar = new ProgressBar($output, $rows);
$progressBar->setBarCharacter('<fg=magenta>=</>');
$progressBar->setProgressCharacter("\xF0\x9F\x8D\xBA");

$table = new Table($output);
for ($i = 0; $i<$rows; $i++) {
    $table->addRow([
        sprintf('Row <info># %s</info>', $i),
        rand(0, 1000)
    ]);
    usleep(300000);

    $progressBar->advance();
}

$progressBar->finish();
$output->writeln('');
$table->render();

Moment of truth:

php print_pretty.php

Check out the animated gif below!

That's just another trick hidden inside Symfony. If you want to learn more, check out our entire Symfony track!

Have fun!