Page Contents

Option Parsers

class Cake\Console\ConsoleOptionParser

Console applications typically take options and arguments as the primary way to get information from the terminal into your commands.

Defining an OptionParser

Commands and Shells provide a buildOptionParser($parser) hook method that you can use to define the options and arguments for your commands:

protected function buildOptionParser($parser)
{
    // Define your options and arguments.

    // Return the completed parser
    return $parser;
}

Shell classes use the getOptionParser() hook method to define their option parser:

public function getOptionParser()
{
    // Get an empty parser from the framework.
    $parser = parent::getOptionParser();

    // Define your options and arguments.

    // Return the completed parser
    return $parser;
}

Using Arguments

Cake\Console\ConsoleOptionParser::addArgument($name, $params = [])

Positional arguments are frequently used in command line tools, and ConsoleOptionParser allows you to define positional arguments as well as make them required. You can add arguments one at a time with $parser->addArgument(); or multiple at once with $parser->addArguments();:

$parser->addArgument('model', ['help' => 'The model to bake']);

You can use the following options when creating an argument:

  • help The help text to display for this argument.

  • required Whether this parameter is required.

  • index The index for the arg, if left undefined the argument will be put onto the end of the arguments. If you define the same index twice the first option will be overwritten.

  • choices An array of valid choices for this argument. If left empty all values are valid. An exception will be raised when parse() encounters an invalid value.

Arguments that have been marked as required will throw an exception when parsing the command if they have been omitted. So you don’t have to handle that in your shell.

Adding Multiple Arguments

Cake\Console\ConsoleOptionParser::addArguments(array $args)

If you have an array with multiple arguments you can use $parser->addArguments() to add multiple arguments at once.

$parser->addArguments([
    'node' => ['help' => 'The node to create', 'required' => true],
    'parent' => ['help' => 'The parent node', 'required' => true]
]);

As with all the builder methods on ConsoleOptionParser, addArguments can be used as part of a fluent method chain.

Validating Arguments

When creating positional arguments, you can use the required flag, to indicate that an argument must be present when a shell is called. Additionally you can use choices to force an argument to be from a list of valid choices:

$parser->addArgument('type', [
    'help' => 'The type of node to interact with.',
    'required' => true,
    'choices' => ['aro', 'aco']
]);

The above will create an argument that is required and has validation on the input. If the argument is either missing, or has an incorrect value an exception will be raised and the shell will be stopped.

Using Options

Cake\Console\ConsoleOptionParser::addOption($name, $options = [])

Options or flags are used in command line tools to provide unordered key/value arguments for your commands. Options can define both verbose and short aliases. They can accept a value (e.g --connection=default) or be boolean options (e.g --verbose). Options are defined with the addOption() method:

$parser->addOption('connection', [
    'short' => 'c',
    'help' => 'connection',
    'default' => 'default',
]);

The above would allow you to use either cake myshell --connection=other, cake myshell --connection other, or cake myshell -c other when invoking the shell.

Boolean switches do not accept or consume values, and their presence just enables them in the parsed parameters:

$parser->addOption('no-commit', ['boolean' => true]);

This option when used like cake mycommand --no-commit something would have a value of true, and ‘something’ would be a treated as a positional argument.

When creating options you can use the following options to define the behavior of the option:

  • short - The single letter variant for this option, leave undefined for none.

  • help - Help text for this option. Used when generating help for the option.

  • default - The default value for this option. If not defined the default will be true.

  • boolean - The option uses no value, it’s just a boolean switch. Defaults to false.

  • choices - An array of valid choices for this option. If left empty all values are valid. An exception will be raised when parse() encounters an invalid value.

Adding Multiple Options

Cake\Console\ConsoleOptionParser::addOptions(array $options)

If you have an array with multiple options you can use $parser->addOptions() to add multiple options at once.

$parser->addOptions([
    'node' => ['short' => 'n', 'help' => 'The node to create'],
    'parent' => ['short' => 'p', 'help' => 'The parent node']
]);

As with all the builder methods on ConsoleOptionParser, addOptions can be used as part of a fluent method chain.

Option values are stored in the $this->params array. You can also use the convenience method $this->param() to avoid errors when trying to access non-present options.

Validating Options

Options can be provided with a set of choices much like positional arguments can be. When an option has defined choices, those are the only valid choices for an option. All other values will raise an InvalidArgumentException:

$parser->addOption('accept', [
    'help' => 'What version to accept.',
    'choices' => ['working', 'theirs', 'mine']
]);

Using Boolean Options

Options can be defined as boolean options, which are useful when you need to create some flag options. Like options with defaults, boolean options always include themselves into the parsed parameters. When the flags are present they are set to true, when they are absent they are set to false:

$parser->addOption('verbose', [
    'help' => 'Enable verbose output.',
    'boolean' => true
]);

The following option would always have a value in the parsed parameter. When not included its default value would be false, and when defined it will be true.

Building a ConsoleOptionParser from an Array

Cake\Console\ConsoleOptionParser::buildFromArray($spec)

As previously mentioned, when creating subcommand option parsers, you can define the parser spec as an array for that method. This can help make building subcommand parsers easier, as everything is an array:

$parser->addSubcommand('check', [
    'help' => __('Check the permissions between an ACO and ARO.'),
    'parser' => [
        'description' => [
            __("Use this command to grant ACL permissions. Once executed, the "),
            __("ARO specified (and its children, if any) will have ALLOW access "),
            __("to the specified ACO action (and the ACO's children, if any).")
        ],
        'arguments' => [
            'aro' => ['help' => __('ARO to check.'), 'required' => true],
            'aco' => ['help' => __('ACO to check.'), 'required' => true],
            'action' => ['help' => __('Action to check')]
        ]
    ]
]);

Inside the parser spec, you can define keys for arguments, options, description and epilog. You cannot define subcommands inside an array style builder. The values for arguments, and options, should follow the format that Cake\Console\ConsoleOptionParser::addArguments() and Cake\Console\ConsoleOptionParser::addOptions() use. You can also use buildFromArray on its own, to build an option parser:

public function getOptionParser()
{
    return ConsoleOptionParser::buildFromArray([
        'description' => [
            __("Use this command to grant ACL permissions. Once executed, the "),
            __("ARO specified (and its children, if any) will have ALLOW access "),
            __("to the specified ACO action (and the ACO's children, if any).")
        ],
        'arguments' => [
            'aro' => ['help' => __('ARO to check.'), 'required' => true],
            'aco' => ['help' => __('ACO to check.'), 'required' => true],
            'action' => ['help' => __('Action to check')]
        ]
    ]);
}

Merging Option Parsers

Cake\Console\ConsoleOptionParser::merge($spec)

When building a group command, you maybe want to combine several parsers for this:

$parser->merge($anotherParser);

Note that the order of arguments for each parser must be the same, and that options must also be compatible for it work. So do not use keys for different things.

Getting Help from Shells

By defining your options and arguments with the option parser CakePHP can automatically generate rudimentary help information and add a --help and -h to each of your commands. Using one of these options will allow you to see the generated help content:

bin/cake bake --help
bin/cake bake -h

Would both generate the help for bake. You can also get help for nested commands:

bin/cake bake model --help
bin/cake bake model -h

The above would get you the help specific to bake’s model command.

Getting Help as XML

When building automated tools or development tools that need to interact with CakePHP shells, it’s nice to have help available in a machine parse-able format. By providing the xml option when requesting help you can have help content returned as XML:

cake bake --help xml
cake bake -h xml

The above would return an XML document with the generated help, options, arguments and subcommands for the selected shell. A sample XML document would look like:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<shell>
    <command>bake fixture</command>
    <description>Generate fixtures for use with the test suite. You can use
        `bake fixture all` to bake all fixtures.</description>
    <epilog>
        Omitting all arguments and options will enter into an interactive
        mode.
    </epilog>
    <options>
        <option name="--help" short="-h" boolean="1">
            <default/>
            <choices/>
        </option>
        <option name="--verbose" short="-v" boolean="1">
            <default/>
            <choices/>
        </option>
        <option name="--quiet" short="-q" boolean="1">
            <default/>
            <choices/>
        </option>
        <option name="--count" short="-n" boolean="">
            <default>10</default>
            <choices/>
        </option>
        <option name="--connection" short="-c" boolean="">
            <default>default</default>
            <choices/>
        </option>
        <option name="--plugin" short="-p" boolean="">
            <default/>
            <choices/>
        </option>
        <option name="--records" short="-r" boolean="1">
            <default/>
            <choices/>
        </option>
    </options>
    <arguments>
        <argument name="name" help="Name of the fixture to bake.
            Can use Plugin.name to bake plugin fixtures." required="">
            <choices/>
        </argument>
    </arguments>
</shell>

Customizing Help Output

You can further enrich the generated help content by adding a description, and epilog.

Set the Description

Cake\Console\ConsoleOptionParser::setDescription($text)

The description displays above the argument and option information. By passing in either an array or a string, you can set the value of the description:

// Set multiple lines at once
$parser->setDescription(['line one', 'line two']);
// Prior to 3.4
$parser->description(['line one', 'line two']);

// Read the current value
$parser->getDescription();

Set the Epilog

Cake\Console\ConsoleOptionParser::setEpilog($text)

Gets or sets the epilog for the option parser. The epilog is displayed after the argument and option information. By passing in either an array or a string, you can set the value of the epilog:

// Set multiple lines at once
$parser->setEpilog(['line one', 'line two']);
// Prior to 3.4
$parser->epilog(['line one', 'line two']);

// Read the current value
$parser->getEpilog();

Adding Subcommands

Cake\Console\ConsoleOptionParser::addSubcommand($name, $options = [])

Console applications are often made of subcommands, and these subcommands may require special option parsing and have their own help. A perfect example of this is bake. Bake is made of many separate tasks that all have their own help and options. ConsoleOptionParser allows you to define subcommands and provide command specific option parsers so the shell knows how to parse commands for its tasks:

$parser->addSubcommand('model', [
    'help' => 'Bake a model',
    'parser' => $this->Model->getOptionParser()
]);

The above is an example of how you could provide help and a specialized option parser for a shell’s task. By calling the Task’s getOptionParser() we don’t have to duplicate the option parser generation, or mix concerns in our shell. Adding subcommands in this way has two advantages. First, it lets your shell document its subcommands in the generated help. It also gives easy access to the subcommand help. With the above subcommand created you could call cake myshell --help and see the list of subcommands, and also run cake myshell model --help to view the help for just the model task.

Note

Once your Shell defines subcommands, all subcommands must be explicitly defined.

When defining a subcommand you can use the following options:

  • help - Help text for the subcommand.

  • parser - A ConsoleOptionParser for the subcommand. This allows you to create method specific option parsers. When help is generated for a subcommand, if a parser is present it will be used. You can also supply the parser as an array that is compatible with Cake\Console\ConsoleOptionParser::buildFromArray()

Adding subcommands can be done as part of a fluent method chain.

Changed in version 3.5.0: When adding multi-word subcommands you can now invoke those commands using snake_case in addition to the camelBacked form.

Deprecated since version 3.6.0: Subcommands are deprecated. Instead use nested commands.