This document is for CakePHP's development version, which can be significantly different from previous releases.
You may want to read current stable release documentation instead.

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Completion Tool

Working with the console gives the developer a lot of possibilities but having to completely know and write those commands can be tedious. Especially when developing new shells where the commands differ per minute iteration. The Completion Shells aids in this matter by providing an API to write completion scripts for shells like bash, zsh, fish etc.

Sub Commands

The Completion Shell consists of a number of sub commands to assist the developer creating its completion script. Each for a different step in the autocompletion process.

Commands

For the first step commands outputs the available Shell Commands, including plugin name when applicable. (All returned possibilities, for this and the other sub commands, are separated by a space.) For example:

bin/cake Completion commands

Returns:

acl api bake command_list completion console i18n schema server test testsuite upgrade

Your completion script can select the relevant commands from that list to continue with. (For this and the following sub commands.)

subCommands

Once the preferred command has been chosen subCommands comes in as the second step and outputs the possible sub command for the given shell command. For example:

bin/cake Completion subcommands bake

Returns:

controller db_config fixture model plugin project test view

options

As the third and final options outputs options for the given (sub) command as set in getOptionParser. (Including the default options inherited from Shell.) For example:

bin/cake Completion options bake

Returns:

--help -h --verbose -v --quiet -q --everything --connection -c --force -f --plugin -p --prefix --theme -t

You can also pass an additional argument being the shell sub-command : it will output the specific options of this sub-command.

How to enable Bash autocompletion for the CakePHP Console

First, make sure the bash-completion library is installed. If not, you do it with the following command:

apt-get install bash-completion

Create a file named cake in /etc/bash_completion.d/ and put the Bash Completion file content inside it.

Save the file, then restart your console.

Note

If you are using MacOS X, you can install the bash-completion library using homebrew with the command brew install bash-completion. The target directory for the cake file will be /usr/local/etc/bash_completion.d/.

Bash Completion file content

This is the code you need to put inside the cake file in the correct location in order to get autocompletion when using the CakePHP console:

#
# Bash completion file for CakePHP console
#

_cake()
{
    local cur prev opts cake
    COMPREPLY=()
    cake="${COMP_WORDS[0]}"
    cur="${COMP_WORDS[COMP_CWORD]}"
    prev="${COMP_WORDS[COMP_CWORD-1]}"

    if [[ "$cur" == -* ]] ; then
        if [[ ${COMP_CWORD} = 1 ]] ; then
            opts=$(${cake} Completion options)
        elif [[ ${COMP_CWORD} = 2 ]] ; then
            opts=$(${cake} Completion options "${COMP_WORDS[1]}")
        else
            opts=$(${cake} Completion options "${COMP_WORDS[1]}" "${COMP_WORDS[2]}")
        fi

        COMPREPLY=( $(compgen -W "${opts}" -- ${cur}) )
        return 0
    fi

    if [[ ${COMP_CWORD} = 1 ]] ; then
        opts=$(${cake} Completion commands)
        COMPREPLY=( $(compgen -W "${opts}" -- ${cur}) )
        return 0
    fi

    if [[ ${COMP_CWORD} = 2 ]] ; then
        opts=$(${cake} Completion subcommands $prev)
        COMPREPLY=( $(compgen -W "${opts}" -- ${cur}) )
        if [[ $COMPREPLY = "" ]] ; then
            _filedir
            return 0
        fi
        return 0
    fi

    opts=$(${cake} Completion fuzzy "${COMP_WORDS[@]:1}")
    COMPREPLY=( $(compgen -W "${opts}" -- ${cur}) )
    if [[ $COMPREPLY = "" ]] ; then
        _filedir
        return 0
    fi
    return 0;
}

complete -F _cake cake bin/cake

Using autocompletion

Once enabled, the autocompletion can be used the same way than for other built-in commands, using the TAB key. Three type of autocompletion are provided. The following output are from a fresh CakePHP install.

Commands

Sample output for commands autocompletion:

$ bin/cake <tab>
bake        i18n        schema_cache   routes
console     migrations  plugin         server

Subcommands

Sample output for subcommands autocompletion:

$ bin/cake bake <tab>
behavior            helper              shell
cell                mailer              shell_helper
component           migration           template
controller          migration_snapshot  test
fixture             model
form                plugin

Options

Sample output for subcommands options autocompletion:

$ bin/cake bake -<tab>
-c            --everything  --force       --help        --plugin      -q            -t            -v
--connection  -f            -h            -p            --prefix      --quiet       --theme       --verbose