Matt Stauffer has posted the latest article in his "New Features in Laravel 5.3" series today. In this new tutorial Matt focuses on the creation of console commands - additional functionality you can add in to the pre-existing "artisan" command handling.

Before Laravel 5.3, defining an Artisan console command—something like php artisan sync:dates—required you to create a new class for that command and register it in the Console Kernel. This is fine, but sometimes it feels like overkill for what might end up just being a single line of functional code.

As of Laravel 5.3, you'll notice that there's a new method in the Console/Kernel.php file named commands(), and it loads a new file at routes/console.php. This new "console routes" file allows us to define Artisan console commands with a single Closure instead the prior "define a class then register it in the console Kernel" flow. Much faster, much easier.

In v5.3 you define commands using "routes" along with a simple description using fluent statements. He shows how to add a simple command, one with input and a more streamlined example pulling values directly from the "route" signature.