################### Running via the CLI ################### As well as calling an applications :doc:`Controllers <./controllers>` via the URL in a browser they can also be loaded via the command-line interface (CLI). .. contents:: Page Contents What is the CLI? ================ The command-line interface is a text-based method of interacting with computers. For more information, check the `Wikipedia article <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command-line_interface>`_. 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 the return value of :php:func:`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:: <?php class Tools extends CI_Controller { public function message($to = 'World') { echo "Hello {$to}!".PHP_EOL; } } Then save the file to your *application/controllers/* folder. Now normally you would visit the site using a URL similar to this:: example.com/index.php/tools/message/to Instead, we are going to open the terminal in Mac/Linux or go to Run > "cmd" in Windows and navigate to our CodeIgniter project. .. code-block:: bash $ cd /path/to/project; $ php index.php tools message If you did it right, you should see *Hello World!* printed. .. code-block:: bash $ 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.