Phpake

Phpake is a make-like utility built for PHP. It is pronounced fake because the second p is silent just like the second p in the word elephpant.

I've always found writing a Makefile quite challenging because the syntax is similar to the shell syntax, but quite different at the same time. When I'm working with Ruby, I use rake and it's awesome because it uses Ruby syntax. When I work with PHP, I often miss having a similar tool that is easy to install, easy to use, and allows full-fledged PHP syntax. Thus, Phpake was born.

I invite you to use it, and I hope you like it.

~ Jigarius

Installation

Phpake can easily be installed with composer, either within a project or globally on your system.

System-wide installation

To install Phpake globally on your system, use the following command:

composer global require jigarius/phpake

Now, to run phpake from anywhere on your system, Composer's vendor/bin directory needs to be included in the the PATH variable.

Project installation

To install Phpake in a particular project, run the following command:

composer require jigarius/phpake

You should then be able to run it with composer exec phpake.

Usage

To use Phpake, start by creating a Phpakefile to define some tasks. Each task is simply a PHP function. You can read more on creating a Phpakefile under the Phpakefile section.

Here are some common Phpake commands. You need to run them from a directory containing a Phpakefile.

• phpake - shows a list of available commands.
• phpake hello-world - runs the command defined by function hello_world().
• phpake hello-human Bunny Wabbit - passes 2 parameters to the task.
• phpake hello-group --help - shows help text for the task.

Phpakefile

A Phpakefile contains definitions of tasks that can be executed by Phpake. The following subheadings are about defining such tasks. A Phpake task definition is simply a PHP function (a task callback). Here's are some examples:

• Hello world
• Input Output
• Namespaces
• Variadic arguments
• Shell commands
• Including commands

Simple tasks

Here's a simple task that takes no input and prints some output. Just make sure that the function name doesn't coincide with any existing functions.

/**
 * Say hello world.
 */
function hello_world() {
  echo 'Hello world' . PHP_EOL;
}

This task can then be executed as phpake hello-world. You can also organize functions with PHP namespaces.

Regular Parameters

If your task needs some input from the user, simply introduce one or more arguments in the function definition.

function hello_human($fname, $lname = NULL) {
  // Do something
}

Since $lname has a default value, it is treated as an optional argument.

Special parameters

Phpake is built with Symfony Console, which provides certain special parameters that can help you enrich your application even further. If your task has a parameter with one of these special names, it will behave specially. For more info on these objects, please refer to the Symfony Console documentation.

$input

A Symfony Console input object.

$output

A Symfony Console output object that makes it easier to generate well-formatted, colorful output.

function hello_joey($output) {
  $output->writeln('Hello <info>Joey</info>!');
}

The text included in <info></info> will appear in color.

$command

Name of the Symfony Console command that is being executed. It looks like the task function name with some minor differences.

• For a function hello_world() the command becomes hello-world
• If defined in a namespace, it becomes namespace:hello-world.

$rest

Often there are tasks that can accept an unlimited number of arguments. These can be handled with a $rest parameter. It must be defined as the last argument to your function.

function hello_group(string $you, string $rest) {
  // Do something.
}

If a default value of NULL is assigned to $rest, it becomes optional, otherwise, it requires one or more values.

Helpers

Say, you have a function that helps other tasks but it is not a command by itself. Such functions can be put in a Phpakefile too. However, so that Phpake doesn't confuse them for commands, the function name must begin with an underscore. For example a function named _foo() will not result in a command named phpake foo because the function name starts with an underscore.

Development

This project uses a Dockerized development environment. Run the project as you would any other docker-compose based project.

When developing for the first time,

• Clone the repository with git clone
• cd into the cloned repository
• Build Docker images: docker compose build
• Bring up the containers: docker compose up -d

After the initial setup, you can use the following commands:

• docker compose start: Start the project's containers
• make ssh: Launch a shell inside the project's container
  • You'll spend most of your time here
  • The command phpake should be available
• docker compose stop: Stops the project's containers when you're done
• See the Makefile for more helpful commands

Links

• Phpake on Packagist
• Phpake: A Tool like Make/Rake Built for PHP article on Jigarius.com
• Phpake video tutorial (coming soon)