For one of my projects I needed an interactive console command in Yii 1, i.e. the one that is gathering all information from user in an interactive mode (a serie of questions and answers displayed directly in the console), ignoring command-line arguments at all.

This is an example (or rather a bare foundation, as this actually is doing nothing) of such solution. It has some console text formatting methods (borders, text alignment) plus simple method for gathering user response.

The code ¶

Here is an implementation for Yii 1 of mentioned solution.

class ImportCommand extends CConsoleCommand
{
    const BORDER_WIDTH = 80;

    public function actionIndex($args)
    {
        $message = $this->alignText('This text is aligned to the right border...', 'right')."\n";
        $message .= "\n";
        $message .= $this->alignText('...this one is centered...', 'center')."\n";
        $message .= "\n";
        $message .= $this->alignText('...and this is left as is, so aligned to the left border!', 'left')."\n";
        $message .= "\n\n";
        $message .= $this->alignText('Finally we have a really long text, no matter, how aligned, that is going to be cut right there, where it should');

        $this->drawBorder($message);

        $this->readStdin();

        echo 'You selected: '.$this->readStdin('Enter any alphabet letter, please...');
        
        $this->clearStdin();
    }

    /**
     * Aligns text to given margin.
     * 
     * @param  string $text       Text to be aligned.
     * @param  string $align      Align method: 'right', 'center' or 'left' (default == empty string).
     * @param  integer $lineWidth Maximim line width. If not specified, class' constant will be used instead.
     * 
     * @return string             Aligned text, pad with trailing and following spaces.
     */
    public function alignText($text, $align = 'left', $lineWidth = null)
    {
        $lineWidth = is_null($lineWidth) ? self::BORDER_WIDTH : $lineWidth;
        $lineWidth = $lineWidth - 4;

        $text = strlen($text) > $lineWidth ? substr($text, 0, $lineWidth) : $text;

        if($align === 'right')
        {
            return str_repeat(' ', $lineWidth - strlen($text)).$text;
        }

        if($align === 'center')
        {
            $margin = floor($lineWidth  / 2) - floor(strlen($text) / 2);

            return str_repeat(' ', $margin).str_pad($text, $margin , ' ');
        }
        else return $text;
    }

    /**
     * Draws console-like (DOS-like?) text border around passed text.
     * 
     * @param  string $text       Text to be outlined in a fancy-like text border.
     * @param  integer $lineWidth Maximim width of each border line. See above for details.
     */
    public function drawBorder($text, $lineWidth = null)
    {
        $lineWidth = is_null($lineWidth) ? self::BORDER_WIDTH : $lineWidth;
        $lineWidth = $lineWidth > 80 ? 80 : $lineWidth;

        $nl = $lineWidth === 80 ? '' : "\n";

        echo str_repeat('*', $lineWidth).$nl;

        echo '*'.str_repeat(' ', $lineWidth - 2).'*'.$nl;

        foreach(explode("\n", $text) as $line) echo '* '.str_pad($line, $lineWidth - 4, ' ').' *'.$nl;

        echo '*'.str_repeat(' ', $lineWidth - 2).'*'.$nl;

        echo str_repeat('*', $lineWidth).$nl;
    }

    /**
     * Get user entry / decision.
     * 
     * @param  string $message Information to be displayed, when requiring user to enter something.
     * 
     * @return string          User entry.
     */
    public function readStdin($message = 'Continue [Y/N]?')
    {
        echo $message;

        $handle = fopen("php://stdin","r");
        $line = fgets($handle);

        return trim($line);
    }
    
    /**
     * Clears console window.
     *
     * The implementation used here can't be anymore ugly, but it is the only one,
     * that is working, when using GitBash. All other methods fails:
     *
     * http://stackoverflow.com/a/24327758/1469208
     * http://stackoverflow.com/a/29193143/1469208
     */
    public function clearStdin()
    {
        for ($i = 0; $i < 50; $i++) echo "rn";
    }
}

Execution ¶

To get this thing working, put all the above code in a separate .php file and save it to protected/commands path under ImportCommand.php name.

Then open console window, navigate to protected folder in your application and execute:

yiic import

Of course, rename both file and class name, if you want to use this command under different name.

Also make sure that you have set correctly everything around running console commands.