Laravel small standalone one-off script without artisan command? - php

Question

I need to check something small in Laravel, so I just want to make a small script to check it.
I know that I can do it with
php artisan make:console ...
But It will add a file to the App/Console/Command, and I will need to update app/Console/Kernel.php. It means that I will have do commit it to source control, which is really not needed.
Is there a way to have a standalone laravel script which will give me access to the Laravel Components?
I am using Laravel 5.2, (make:command doesn't exists, only make:console)
Just an example for what I tried:
<?php
use App\User;
use DB;
require __DIR__.'/../vendor/autoload.php';
require __DIR__.'/..//bootstrap/app.php';
echo "hello world\n";
$res=User::where('id',5)->first();
echo "end!\n";
?>
But I am getting an error:
PHP Fatal error: Uncaught Error: Call to a member function connection() on null in /var/www/html/dpriceit/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Database/Eloquent/Model.php:3314
Stack trace:
#0 /var/www/html/dpriceit/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Database/Eloquent/Model.php(3280): Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model::resolveConnection(NULL)
#1 /var/www/html/dpriceit/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Database/Eloquent/Model.php(1880): Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model->getConnection()
#2 /var/www/html/dpriceit/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Database/Eloquent/Model.php(1853): Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model->newBaseQueryBuilder()
#3 /var/www/html/dpriceit/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Database/Eloquent/Model.php(1823): Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model->newQueryWithoutScopes()
#4 /var/www/html/dpriceit/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Database/Eloquent/Model.php(3524): Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model->newQuery()
UPDATE
I tried creating a console command
php artisan make:console MyTempTest
But when I do php artisan list I don't see its signature in the list of available commands.

Answer 1

To fix the error you're getting, boot up the application's kernel and handle the response like so
app\script.php
<?php
use App\User;
require __DIR__.'/../vendor/autoload.php';
$app = require_once __DIR__.'/../bootstrap/app.php';
$kernel = $app->make(Illuminate\Contracts\Http\Kernel::class);
$response = $kernel->handle(
$request = Illuminate\Http\Request::capture()
);
echo "hello world\n";
$res = User::find(5)->name;
var_dump($res);
echo "end!\n";
Then from a terminal, run php app/script.php
Result:
~/Sites/laravel (master ✗) ✹ ★ ᐅ php app/script.php
hello world
string(11) "Khalid Bins"
end!

Answer 2

When I want to try/test something in Laravel, I usually do one of three things:
If the "something" I want to try is a simple one-liner I use Tinker: artisan tinker. This gives you the fully booted Laravel Framework, ready to use any class or function you want. This is usually my go-to when I want to: Test a global helper function I just created; Create a model using a factory, to check if my factory is setup correctly; Check if my $casts array on a model is setup the right way;
Another scenario might involve a bit more code, maybe a few lines to retrieve some data from the database, mutate it and show it on a page. For this you can simply create a closure based route in the file routes/web.php:
Route::get('test-url', function () {
$user = User::where('email', 'user#example.com')->first();
$user->makeAdmin()->save();
// I can see on the page if the attributes have been changed, as a result of the makeAdmin() call.
return $user->getAttributes();
});
The same is possible for console routes. Add a structure like this in your routes/console.php file:
Artisan::command('test:functionality', function () {
$instance = new BusinessLogic();
$result = $instance->someVeryInterestingMethod();
dump($result);
});
You can then call this function from the command line with php artisan test:functionality. You can, of course, call the command whatever you like.
Then the last scenario; when I want to try something new (like a new package, library, plugin) and it will be more than a few lines of code. I create a new test class with php artisan make:test ThrowawayTest (or another randomly chosen name). I can then add a few lines of code and run it with PHPUnit. I have set my editor to launch the test that my cursor is on with the key-combination CTRL-T so that I can re-run it quickly when some code changed.
This means I can let some code stay in its function, and write a new function to elaborate on the things I just learned about the new package. When I am finished I can either leave the code and commit it to the repository, so that I can check the code later on when I need to use some of it again for production code. I can also throw away the test file if it seems like I won't need the code for reference in the future.
This last solution also gives me the added benefit of being able to use assert statements from PHPUnit.
Hope this gives you some insight on the different possibilities with the Laravel Framework when it comes to trying or testing out new stuff.