Cherrycake apps can run as command line applications that are invoked from an operating system prompt like the Linux shell.

To let your app attend requests from the command line, you set up an Action just like any other, except this time you use the ActionCli class when mapping it, like this:

$e->Actions->mapAction(
    "helloWorldCli",
    new \Cherrycake\Actions\ActionCli([
        "moduleType" => \Cherrycake\ACTION_MODULE_TYPE_APP,
        "moduleName" => "HelloWorld",
        "methodName" => "sayHi"
    ])
);

And in your method, you use the ResponseCli class instead of the usual ResponseTextHtml or ResponseTextPlain:

function sayHi() {
    global $e;
    $e->Output->setResponse(new \Cherrycake\Actions\ResponseCli([
        "payload" => "Hello World from the Cli interface"
    ]));
}

Executing CLI Actions

If you remember how we created the index.php file in the Getting started guide, you'll remember that the method we called to make Cherrycake starting working on the received request actions was Engine:attendWebRequest. When creating an app that works in the command line, the method to use is Engine:attendCliRequest instead, like this:

<?php
​
namespace CherrycakeApp;
​
require "vendor/autoload.php";
​
$e = new \Cherrycake\Engine;
​
if ($e->init(__NAMESPACE__, [
    "isDevel" => true
]))
    $e->attendCliRequest();
​
$e->end();

Apps that both attend web requests and CLI actions

Sometimes you'll want your app to attend web requests like a normal web application, but also attend some CLI actions that you'll use to perform maintenance work, run batch processes or similar tasks that are triggered by an admin from the command line, and not by a client using a browser.

A common solution is to create a cli.php file additionally to the index.php file. This cli.php will look more or less equal to your existing index.php, but it will call the Engine:attendCliRequest instead of Engine:attendWebRequest method.

The Cherrycake Skeleton repository provides a cli.php file where you'll see this solution at work.

Running an app from the command line

To run a Cherrycake app from the command line in Linux, you use the PHP cli executable to run the cli.php file (or whatever name you choose for your main .php file), and pass the Action name as the first parameter.

Following our example above, to run helloWorldCli Action, we would call Cherrycake from the Linux command line like this:

php -f ./cli.php helloWorldCli

Hello World from the Cli interface

Passing parameters to CLI actions

Just like regular Actions can receive GET and POST parameters, CLI actions can receive command line parameters. To map an ActionCli that receives parameters, you pass the parameters array when creating the Request object just like you already did in the Accept GET or POST parameters of the Actions Guide, except this time you use the REQUEST_PARAMETER_TYPE_CLI parameter type instead of REQUEST_PARAMETER_TYPE_GET or REQUEST_PARAMETER_TYPE_POST, like this:

$e->Actions->mapAction(
    "userFlushCache",
    new \Cherrycake\Actions\ActionCli([
        "moduleType" => \Cherrycake\ACTION_MODULE_TYPE_APP,
        "moduleName" => "Users",
        "methodName" => "flushUserCacheCli",
        "parameters" => [
            new \Cherrycake\Actions\RequestParameter([
                "type" => \Cherrycake\REQUEST_PARAMETER_TYPE_CLI,
                "name" => "userId",
                "securityRules" => [
                    \Cherrycake\SECURITY_RULE_TYPICAL_ID
                ]
            ])
        ]
    ])
);

And you receive the parameters just like you do with GET or POST:

function flushUserCacheCli($request) {
    global $e;
    $user = new User([
        "loadMethod" => "fromId",
        "id" => $request->id
    ]);
    $user->clearCache();
    $e->Output->setResponse(new \Cherrycake\Actions\ResponseCli([
        "payload" => "Cache for user ".$request->userId." flushed"
    ]));
}

Now, to call a CLI action that accepts parameters from the command line, you use the regular UNIX parameters syntax after the action name, like this:

php -f ./cli.php userFlushCache --userId=832

Cache for user 832 flushed