The SitePoint PHP blog has posted a tutorial from author Claudio Ribeiro that wants to re-introduce you to the Symfony Console package, a component of the larger Symfony framework that makes it easier to create and work with command-line PHP scripts.

As software developers, we often feel the need to resort to command line tools. These kinds of tools are helpful when we need to do a sort of recurring task like migrating data, performing imports, or creating cron jobs.

The Symfony Console component tool provides us with a simple framework to create our own command line tools. Unlike many components in Symfony, this is a standalone package and is used by the likes of Laravel‘s Artisan and many other famous PHP packages.

The tutorial then walks you through the installation process, via Composer, and the creation of a new command. With this simple base created, he then adds in actual functionality, building out a command to hash and verify a password string. They show how to use the command and an example of its output. Next up, he creates another command example, this time verifying the password hash provided as an argument. The tutorial wraps up with a look at testing your console comamnds with PHPUnit tests via the included CommandTester functionality.