cmdlineapp.php

Simple class to help implement command-line applications in PHP. Helps with an command-line application basic tasks like argument parsing, debugging, syntax errors and type checking.

Features

• Syntax specification of arguments containing type, default values, requirements and help messages

• Much more flexible and powerfull than getopt PHP function call

• Simple to use, just inherit the CmdlineApp class and define the syntax array of arguments

• Msg function to print if verbose

License

This software is distributed under the MIT license. Please read LICENSE for information on the software availability and distribution.

Dependencies

• PHP 5.6

Instalation

Clone or download this repository and run sudo make install.

Test and Example

Run the test.php program in the src dir.

Syntax specification

Syntax is specified by declaring a syntax array with all the arguments that can be supplied to the command-line application. $this->syntax is an array of objects (or hashes), each containing the following variables:

Name	Contents	Required
long	Long form, used as --arg=value or --arg value	yes
short	Short form (one char) used as -a=val or -a val	no
type	Type (see next table)	yes
required	1 if the argument is required or 0 for no	no (default is 0, not required)
array	1 if the argument is an array that accepts multiple entries, otherwise only one is accepted	no (default is 0)
help	Help message shown when the application's syntax is printed to the user	no (default is "")

Argument Types

The following are the current argument types implemented:

Type	Regex	Example
string	^.*$	duck
int	^-?\d+$	13
float	^-?\d+(\.\d+)?$	0.55
dateymd	^\d\d\d\d-\d\d-\d\d$	1970-01-01
datedmy	/^\d\d\/\d\d\/\d\d\d\d$/	01/02/1970
flag	^true$|^false$	true
url	/^(?:http(s)?:\/\/)?[\w.-]+(?:\.[\w\.-]+)+[\w\-\._~:/?#[\]@!\$&\(\)\*\+,;=.]+$/	http://duckduckgo.com

Syntax example (as shown in the test.php program)

  var $syntax = [
    ["long" => "string", "short" => "s", "type" => "string", "required" => 1, "help" => "A required string"],
    ["long" => "int", "short" => "i", "type" => "integer", "array" => 1, "required" => 0, "help" => "An integer"],
    ["long" => "float", "short" => "f", "type" => "float", "required" => 0, "help" => "A float"],
    ["long" => "date", "short" => "d", "type" => "dateymd", "required" => 0, "default" => "1970-01-01", "help" => "Any date"],
    ["long" => "help", "short" => "h", "type" => "flag", "default" => false, "help" => "Show the command's syntax"],
    ["long" => "verbose", "short" => "v", "type" => "flag", "default" => false, "help" => "Verbose mode, show more output"],
    ["long" => "debug", "type" => "flag", "default" => false, "help" => "Debug mode, show development data"]
  ];

TODO

Improve testing, more examples

Author

CmdlineApp class was developed by Rodrigo Antunes rorabr@github.com