How to Call a Command from a Controller

The Console component documentation covers how to create a console command. This article covers how to use a console command directly from your controller.

You may have the need to execute some function that is only available in a console command. Usually, you should refactor the command and move some logic into a service that can be reused in the controller. However, when the command is part of a third-party library, you wouldn’t want to modify or duplicate their code. Instead, you can execute the command directly.

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In comparison with a direct call from the console, calling a command from a controller has a slight performance impact because of the request stack overhead.

Imagine you want to send spooled Swift Mailer messages by using the swiftmailer:spool:send command. Run this command from inside your controller via:

// src/Controller/SpoolController.php
namespace App\Controller;

use Symfony\Bundle\FrameworkBundle\Console\Application;
use Symfony\Bundle\FrameworkBundle\Controller\AbstractController;
use Symfony\Component\Console\Input\ArrayInput;
use Symfony\Component\Console\Output\BufferedOutput;
use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Response;
use Symfony\Component\HttpKernel\KernelInterface;

class SpoolController extends AbstractController
{
    public function sendSpool($messages = 10, KernelInterface $kernel)
    {
        $application = new Application($kernel);
        $application->setAutoExit(false);

        $input = new ArrayInput([
            'command' => 'swiftmailer:spool:send',
            // (optional) define the value of command arguments
            'fooArgument' => 'barValue',
            // (optional) pass options to the command
            '--message-limit' => $messages,
        ]);

        // You can use NullOutput() if you don't need the output
        $output = new BufferedOutput();
        $application->run($input, $output);

        // return the output, don't use if you used NullOutput()
        $content = $output->fetch();

        // return new Response(""), if you used NullOutput()
        return new Response($content);
    }
}

Showing Colorized Command Output

By telling the BufferedOutput it is decorated via the second parameter, it will return the Ansi color-coded content. The SensioLabs AnsiToHtml converter can be used to convert this to colorful HTML.

First, require the package:

$ composer require sensiolabs/ansi-to-html

Now, use it in your controller:

// src/Controller/SpoolController.php
namespace App\Controller;

use SensioLabs\AnsiConverter\AnsiToHtmlConverter;
use Symfony\Component\Console\Output\BufferedOutput;
use Symfony\Component\Console\Output\OutputInterface;
use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Response;
// ...

class SpoolController extends AbstractController
{
    public function sendSpool($messages = 10)
    {
        // ...
        $output = new BufferedOutput(
            OutputInterface::VERBOSITY_NORMAL,
            true // true for decorated
        );
        // ...

        // return the output
        $converter = new AnsiToHtmlConverter();
        $content = $output->fetch();

        return new Response($converter->convert($content));
    }
}

The AnsiToHtmlConverter can also be registered as a Twig Extension, and supports optional themes.