Symfony2 app/console bash completion

Warning: This blogpost has been posted over two years ago. That is a long time in development-world! The story here may not be relevant, complete or secure. Code might not be complete or obsoleted, and even my current vision might have (completely) changed on the subject. So please do read further, but use it with caution.
Posted on 02 Feb 2014
Tagged with: [ bash ]  [ completion ]  [ symfony2 ]  [ zsh ] 

If you do command line work under Linux, you probably are aware that when pressing <TAB> automatically completes your command, or give you options for it that are currently available. For instance, when entering cd l en pressing <TAB>, bash gives you a list of all directories starting with an l, which you can select instead of type. If there is only one available directory that starts with an l, it will automatically fill this in for you.

A great way to speed up your CLI development work, and an even better way to get acquainted with all options that are available to you for certain applications.

One of the cool things you can do with this, is customize how your shell does this auto-completion. For instance, git uses such customization to allow you to easily select commands, branches etc. No need to remember or check which branches or remotes are available: just press tab and you can select them from the list!

With symfony2, you have a really nice command line tool (app/console), which enables some really nice commands and features like generating complete crud controllers directly from entities, clearing caches, adding users, and quite possible a whole lot more. When developing symfony2 apps, the console is something you need.

But the console does not come with autocompletion, when typing php app/console, which needs to be followed by a symfony2 console command, you’re on your own. Either you know them by heart, or you must look them up.

Fortunately, this gist makes it a little better: when used, you can just press <tab> after your php app/console, and you will get automatically a list of all the possible commands that are available.

Better yet, when you typed your command, pressing <tab> again will actually display all the possible arguments (like -environment, -ansi, -verbose, or the custom arguments for that specific command).

It’s written in bash, for bash, but fortunately it will work with ZSH too. Have fun.

Download the console completion script here: https://github.com/jaytaph/SFConsole