How to Add CLI in Slim 3 Framework and Schedule it Using Cron

When developing a web application, sometimes we need to schedule some task. Most of the time we will create a php file which then create cron schedule to run the file. Here in this post I will share how to add CLI in Slim 3 Framework and schedule it using cron.

Assuming there's already Slim 3 Framework installed, here are the steps:

Install symfony/console Package

Install symfony/console from packagist using composer, by issuing this command on your terminal:

$ composer -vvv require symfony/console

Create Necessary Files

Once symfony/console installed, create new php file called cli.php and put it to main directory.

<?php

require __DIR__.'/vendor/autoload.php';

use App\Command\RefreshIgLatestPost;
use Symfony\Component\Console\Application;

$command = new RefreshIgLatestPost();

$application = new Application();
$application->add($command);

$application->run();

Next step is create the command file. In this example, I put the file in /src/commands/RefreshIgLatestPost.php

<?php

namespace App\Command;

use Symfony\Component\Console\Command\Command;
use Symfony\Component\Console\Input\InputInterface;
use Symfony\Component\Console\Output\OutputInterface;

class RefreshIgLatestPost extends Command
{
    protected function configure()
    {
        $this
            // the name of the command (the part after "bin/console")
            ->setName('app:refresh-ig-latest-post')

            // the short description shown while running "php bin/console list"
            ->setDescription('Refresh latest post on Algolia dataset.')

            // the full command description shown when running the command with
            // the "--help" option
            ->setHelp('This command allows you refresh Algolia dataset with latest post.')
        ;
    }

    protected function execute(InputInterface $input, OutputInterface $output)
    {

        // Example code
        $output->writeLn("Fetched records from Algolia");

    }
}

Then we register the command class created above in composer.json

// ...omitted

    "autoload": {
        "psr-4": {
            "App\\Command\\": "src/commands"
        }
    },

// ...omitted

Executing the command

After configuring and registering the command, you can execute it in the terminal:

$ php cli.php app:refresh-ig-latest-post

Put the Command into Schedule with Cron

To run the command in a scheduled manner, we should add the command to cron. Here's an example to schedule it every 5 minutes:

$ crontab -e

*/5 * * * *  /usr/bin/php /your/php/application/directory/cli.php app:refresh-ig-latest-post >/dev/null 2>&1

Final Words

I hope that you now know how to add CLI in Slim 3 Framework and schedule it using cron. If you run into any issues or have any feedback feel free to drop a comment below.

Reference

https://symfony.com/doc/3.4/console.html