Silly CLI 1.1 comes with dependency injection 12 April 2015 - Matthieu Napoli

I have just released Silly CLI 1.1 and I think it's awesome, here's why.

What is Silly?

If you missed it, Silly is a small project I started a month ago. The idea is simple: it is a CLI micro-framework.

Much like Silex or Slim let you create a web application in a single file using closures as controllers, Silly let you create a CLI application in a single file using closures as commands:

$app = new Silly\Application(); $app->command('greet [name] [--yell]', function ($name, $yell, $output) { $text = $name ? 'Hello '.$name : 'Hello'; if ($yell) { $text = strtoupper($text); } $output->writeln($text); }); $app->run();

As you can see, no need for classes. Also, commands are defined using a syntax inspired from help and man pages which is short and reads nicely.

Running the application:

$ php app.php greet Hello $ php app.php greet john --yell HELLO JOHN

Of course I didn't reinvent anything. All this is based on Symfony Console, which is great because:

I'm lazy

everybody knows the Symfony Console

This was Silly CLI 1.0, and it was good.

Scaling up

I like micro-frameworks because they allow us to start very simply and very quickly. They also generally don't force us into a specific architecture or organization which, sometimes, is good.

But the value of a micro-framework is even greater when it allows you to scale up. By that I don't mean "mongodb web-scale", I mean "my single script file is too big, I want to organize everything more properly and start doing complex stuff".

Callables

This is where a immensely useful concept of PHP comes into play: callables.

Most examples of micro-frameworks show you the "closure" example of callables because it's the most obvious one for a simple app:

$app->command('greet [name]', function ($name) { // ... });

But as you probably know, closures are not the only kind of callables in PHP. Here is a list of valid PHP callables:

a closure: function () {}

a function name: 'strlen'

an object method: [$object, 'theMethod']

a class static method: ['TheClass', 'theMethod']

invokable object: $object (an object that has an __invoke() method)

All that means is we can replace our closure with classes. Our simple example can then become:

class GreetCommand { public function execute($name) { // ... } } $app->command('greet [name]', [new GreetCommand, 'execute']);

That's a nice first step to organize our growing application. Each command can be put in its own class and file.

Silly 1.1: Dependency injection

Putting our commands in separate files is a good start. But everyone knows that a growing application is not just about organizing code: it's also about managing dependencies.

Instead of turning towards singletons or global functions/static methods, Silly 1.1 helps you into using dependency injection. More specifically, it comes with dependency injection container support.

Choose your container

Silex, Slim, Cilex, … all force you into using a specific container (often Pimple). While this is practical at first, it's usually not so good for scaling up: the more classes or dependencies you have, the more configuration you will write.

Instead of forcing you into using a supposedly better DI container, Silly goes the interoperability route: use whichever container you want!

$app->useContainer($container);

The container you provide has to be compliant with the container-interop standard. If it isn't you can use Acclimate.

Callables in the container

By simply registering a container with ->useContainer() , Silly will retrieve commands from the container when they are not PHP callables:

// Valid PHP callables: doesn't use the container $app->command('greet [name]', function () { /* ... */ }); $app->command('greet [name]', [new GreetCommand, 'execute']); $app->command('greet [name]', ['SomeClass', 'someStaticMethod']); $app->command('greet [name]', new InvokableClassCommand); // Use the container $app->command('greet [name]', ['GreetCommand', 'execute']); // execute is not a static method $app->command('greet [name]', 'InvokableClassCommand'); // implements __invoke()

In the 2 last examples above, the container will be called to instantiate GreetCommand and InvokableClassCommand .

That means that you can configure those classes in your container and benefit from the dependency injection features of your container. For example:

class GreetCommand { private $entityManager; public function __construct(EntityManager $entityManager) { $this->entityManager = $entityManager; } public function execute($name) { // ... } }

Note that our class could also be an invokable class (i.e. one that implements __invoke() ).

Dependency injection in parameters

Dependency injection as shown above only works when you write commands in classes. However you can't use it with closures!

To solve that problem, let's have a look at how dependency injection is performed in AngularJS:

angular.controller('MyController', function (myService, myOtherService) { // ... });

Silly supports the same mechanism of dependency injection through the callable parameters. For example:

use Psr\Logger\LoggerInterface; // the order of parameters doesn't matter: $app->command('process [directory]', function (LoggerInterface $logger, $directory) { $logger->info('Processing directory ' . $directory); // ... });

Silly can inject services and values into parameters by looking into the container using:

the type-hint (i.e. the interface/class name): Psr\Logger\LoggerInterface

(i.e. the interface/class name): the parameter's name: logger

Depending on how you declare your container entries you might want to enable one or the other way, or both.

$app->useContainer($container, $injectByTypeHint = true, $injectByParameterName = true);

If you set both to true , it will first look using the type-hint, then using the parameter name.

The PHP-DI and Pimple edition

Being able to use any container is nice, but sometimes you don't really care and just want to get started. You are covered!

I have created two packages that provide you Silly pre-configured with either PHP-DI or Pimple.

read more about the PHP-DI edition

read more about the Pimple edition

Those wanting the benefit of autowiring might like the former, while those familiar with Silex might feel more at ease with the latter.

Beyond Silly

I hope this example will show how a framework can be built without coupling to a dependency injection container. This was rather easy because it is a micro-framework, but I hope it will give others some ideas.

For those interested to learn more about these topics, everything explained here was actually implemented in a library called Invoker. Feel free to have a look at it and maybe use it in your projects. The same principles shown here could be applied to any framework dispatching to PHP callables. Hopefully it will catch on!

Thanks for @Darhazer and @najidev for reviewing this article.