Running via the CLI
As well as calling an applications Controllers via the URL in a browser they can also be loaded via the command-line interface (CLI).
What is the CLI?
The command-line interface is a text-based method of interacting with computers that looks like what most people remember as DOS.
Why run via the command-line?
There are many reasons for running CodeIgniter from the command-line, but they are not always obvious.
- Run your cron-jobs without needing to use wget or curl
- Make your cron-jobs inaccessible from being loaded in the URL by checking for IS_CLI
- Make interactive "tasks" that can do things like set permissions, prune cache folders, run backups, etc.
- Integrate with other applications in other languages. For example, a random C++ script could call one command and run code in your models!
Let's try it: Hello World!
Let's create a simple controller so you can see it in action. Using your text editor, create a file called tools.php, and put the following code in it:
Then save the file to your application/controllers/ folder.
Now normally you would visit the your site using a URL similar to this:
example.com/index.php/tools/message/to
Instead, we are going to open Terminal in Mac/Lunix or go to Run > "cmd" in Windows and navigate to our CodeIgniter project.
$ cd /path/to/project;
$ php index.php tools message
If you did it right, you should see Hello World!.
$ php index.php tools message "John Smith"
Here we are passing it a argument in the same way that URL parameters work. "John Smith" is passed as a argument and output is: Hello John Smith!.
That's it!
That, in a nutshell, is all there is to know about controllers on the command line. Remember that this is just a normal controller, so routing and _remap works fine.