Console Commands for Application Management (Phing Targets)

Phing

Phing is a PHP project build tool with similar capabilities as GNU make. It can be configured via XML to install your application, run automatic tests and code standards checks, build CSS files from LESS and more.

List of all available targets

You can list all available Phing targets by running:

php phing

Note

Check out the Autocompletion for Phing Targets article, where you can find useful info about autocompletion of target names.

How Phing targets work

Phing targets are defined in build.xml file. Any Phing target can execute a subset of other targets or console commands.

Tip

You can use shorthand command ./phing <target-name> on Unix system or phing <target-name> in Windows CMD instead of php phing <target-name>.

Let us take build target for example. It is located in build.xml file in the shopsys/framework package and it looks like this:

<target
    name="build"
    depends="build-deploy-part-1-db-independent, build-deploy-part-2-db-dependent"
    description="Builds application for production preserving your DB."
/>

This means that every time you run php phing build the build-deploy-part-1-db-independent and build-deploy-part-2-db-dependent targets are executed. But what do those targets do? Let us take look at the first one, that is located in the same file:

<target
    name="build-deploy-part-1-db-independent"
    depends="clean,composer-prod,dirs-create,domains-urls-check,assets,npm"
    description="First part of application build for production preserving your DB (can be run without maintenance page)."
/>

Target build-deploy-part-1-db-independent also executes subset of Phing targets (clean,composer-prod,npm,dirs-create,domains-urls-check,assets).

Note

During the execution of composer-prod, composer-dev and npm targets, there will be installed 3-rd party software as dependencies of Shopsys Platform by composer and npm with licenses that are described in document Open Source License Acknowledgements and Third-Party Copyrights

Let us move a little deeper and take a look at the first one, clean:

<target name="clean" description="Cleans up directories with cache and scripts which are generated on demand.">
    <delete failonerror="false" includeemptydirs="true">
        <fileset dir="${path.var}/cache/">
            <exclude name="/" />
        </fileset>
    </delete>
</target>

Here we can see that this target deletes all dirs in folder /var/cache/ and /web/scripts/.

More information about working with Phing can be found in its documentation.

Most Used Phing Targets

Every Phing target is a task that can be executed simply by php phing <target-name> command.

Basic

build

Builds the application for production preserving your DB.

Most important build command for production. Cleans cache, installs composer dependencies, installs npm, install assets, installs database migrations and much more.

Tip

More about how to install and deploy your application in production can be found in Installation Using Docker on Production Server

build-demo-ci

Most important build command for continuous integration server. Builds the whole application and after that runs all coding standards checks and all tests.

build-demo-dev

Builds the application for development with clean demo DB and runs checks on changed files.

Most important build command for development. Wipes the application data, installs missing dependencies via Composer, creates clean DB and fills it with demo data, prepares assets, builds LESS into CSS, prepares error pages, checks coding standards in changed files (with changes against origin/master) and runs the unit, database, and smoke tests.

build-dev-quick

Builds the application for development preserving your DB while skipping non-essential steps.

Useful for quick migration of recently pulled changes. Cleans cache, installs missing dependencies via Composer, executes DB migrations, prepares assets and builds LESS into CSS.

build-demo-dev-quick

This target is useful if you have already running application and you want to quickly rebuild your application without checking coding standards, running tests, checking right timezone set.

server-run

Runs PHP built-in web server for a chosen domain.

This means you can see the application running without configuring Nginx or Apache server locally.

clean

Cleans up directories with cache and scripts which are generated on demand.

Your go-to command when you feel something should work but does not. Especially useful in the test environment in which cache is not automatically invalidated.

clean-redis

Cleans up cache in Redis database except for sessions.

Useful in development environment and during deploying to production.

clean-redis-old

Cleans up cache in Redis database for previously built versions (but keeps sessions). Previously built version is different from current build-version generated by build-version-generate.

The difference between clean-redis is that clean-redis cleans only current cache, but clean-redis-old cleans old versions and keeps the current cache.

Useful in a development environment and during deploying to production.

build-version-generate

Generates a Symfony configuration build-version variable that is used to distinguish different application builds. The variable itself contains current datetime in PHP format YmdHis and application environment (e.g., 20190311135223_dev) so you can use it in any configuration file by '%build-version%'.

The variable is generated to file config/parameters_version.yaml and this file is excluded from git.

Database

db-migrations-generate

Generates a new database migration class when DB schema is not satisfying ORM.

When you make changes to ORM entities you should run this command that will generate a new migration file for you.

db-migrations

Executes database migrations and checks schema.

db-create

Creates database with required db extensions and collations (that are operating system specific, unfortunately).

The target interactively asks for DB superuser credentials in order to perform all the actions so it is not needed to put superuser credentials into ./env.local.

When a locale is not supported by the operating system the command explains the situation and links to the documentation.

The command is designed to be run only during the first creation of the database but as it uses IF NOT EXISTS commands, it can be manually run on existing database in order to create new DB extensions or collations, too.

demo-data

Wipes Postgres DB, recreates structure, fills with demo data and then exports data to Elasticsearch.

test-db-demo

Drops all data in the test database and creates a new one with demo data and exports products to elasticsearch test index.

Tip

All database related targets db-* have their test-db-* variant for the test database.

elasticsearch-index-recreate

Recreates Elasticsearch indexes structure. Consists of two sub-tasks that can be run independently:

  • elasticsearch-index-delete - deletes existing indexes structure
  • elasticsearch-index-create - (version v9.1.0 and lower) creates new indexes structure by json definitions stored in the resources directory src/Resources/definition
  • elasticsearch-index-migrate - (version v9.1.1 and higher) creates and migrate (when necessary) new indexes structure by json definitions stored in the resources directory src/Resources/definition

elasticsearch-index-migrate

Migrates Elasticsearch indexes if there is change between currently used structure and the one in *.json. Especially useful when you need to change the structure and don't need to have fresh data in Elasticsearch

  • creates new index without alias
  • reindexes data from old index to the new one
  • deletes old index
  • creates alias for the new index

Warning

If you add field/s to the structure and reindex, they won't be available until elasticsearch-export is called.
Your application must handle the properties not being filled correctly until all products are exported.

Danger

Using this phing target after changing the type of field to another in structure (e.g., changing it from bool to integer) will cause an error.
If you need to make this change, please add new field with the correct type and delete the old field instead.

elasticsearch-export

Exports all data for index to Elasticsearch.

Note

From v9.1.1 and higher the export command also run migration for Elasticsearch structure when necessary

Note

If you want to export only data of one domain e.g. when you are introducing new domain in production, you can use php bin/console shopsys:elasticsearch:data-export --domain-id=<DOMAIN_ID>

elasticsearch-export-changed

Exports only changed data for index to Elasticsearch.

Note

If you want to export only data of one domain e.g. when you are introducing new domain in production, you can use php bin/console shopsys:elasticsearch:changed-data-export --domain-id=<DOMAIN_ID>

Coding standards

annotations-check

Checks whether annotations of extended classes in the project match the actual types according to ClassExtensionRegistry. Reported problems can be fixed using annotations-fix phing target.

annotations-fix

Makes static analysis tools understand the extended code in your project by changing annotations and adding @property and @method annotations to relevant classes.

You can read more in the "Framework extensibility" article.

You can read more about the topic in the "Framework extensibility" article.

standards / standards-diff

Checks coding standards in source files. Checking all files may take a few minutes, standards-diff is much quicker as it checks only files changed against origin/master.

standards-fix / standards-fix-diff

Automatically fixes some coding standards violations in all or only changed files.

Tests

tests

Runs unit, database and smoke tests on a newly built test database.

Creates a new test database with demo data and runs all tests except acceptance and performance (they are more time-consuming).

tests-acceptance

Runs acceptance tests. Running Selenium server is required.

More on this topic can be found in Running Acceptance Tests.

tests-acceptance-single

Runs single acceptance test. Fastest way to run test without need of running whole acceptance suit

Can be called as php phing tests-acceptance-single -D test=OrderCest::testFormRemembersFirstName.

selenium-run

Runs the Selenium server for acceptance testing. ChromeDriver is required.

tests-performance-run

Runs performance tests on a newly built test database with performance data.

It may take a few hours as the generation of performance data is very time-consuming. Should be executed on CI server only.

The size of performance data to be generated and asserted limits can be configured via parameters defined in parameters_common.yaml. You can easily override the default values in your parameters.yaml configuration file.

Other

cron

Runs background jobs. Should be executed periodically by system Cron every 5 minutes.

Essential for the production environment. Periodically executed Cron modules recalculate visibility, generate XML feeds and sitemaps, provide error reporting etc.

If you want to have more cron instances registered, you need to create new targets with instance specified. For example:

<target name="cron-default" description="Runs background jobs. Should be executed periodically by system Cron every 5 minutes.">
    <exec executable="${path.php.executable}" passthru="true" checkreturn="true">
        <arg value="${path.bin-console}" />
        <arg value="shopsys:cron" />
        <arg value="--instance-name=default" />
    </exec>
</target>

<target name="cron-import" description="Runs background jobs for import. Should be executed periodically by system Cron every 5 minutes.">
    <exec executable="${path.php.executable}" passthru="true" checkreturn="true">
        <arg value="${path.bin-console}" />
        <arg value="shopsys:cron" />
        <arg value="--instance-name=import" />
    </exec>
</target>

For more information, see Working with Multiple Cron Instances cookbook or you can read about Cron in general.

cron-list

Lists all available background jobs. If there is more than one cron instance registered, jobs are grouped by instance.

For more information, see Working with Multiple Cron Instances cookbook or you can read about Cron in general.

npm-dev

This command build assets once in development mode (with source map, without compilation)

npm-build

This command build assets once in production mode (without source map, with compilation)

npm-watch

Webpack keep ‘watch’-ing for any changes we make in our code and once we save the changes, it will rerun by itself to rebuild the package.

Useful when modifying only js files.

translations-dump

Extracts translatable messages from the whole project including back-end.

Great tool when you want to translate your application into another language.

For more information about translations, see the separate article.

Production

environment-change

Important

Do not use this target on your production server, because it could cause some security vulnerabilities.

Change environment to production, development or test using this target. This target comes handy when you need to debug some functionality on your development / testing server. Switching to development environment will also install composer dev dependencies.

For monorepo developers

frontend-api-generate-apiary-blueprint

Generate apiary blueprint for frontend API based on its pieces.

Pieces of frontend API blueprint are in frontend-api/apiary. These pieces are build together by running this command which creates complete blueprint to frontend-api/apiary.apib.

Customization of Phing targets and properties

You can override and replace any Phing target or property defined in the shopsys/framework package by redefining it in your build.xml config.

When you override a Phing target, the original is renamed to shopsys_framework.TARGET_NAME (see Target Overriding in Phing docs).

For example, if you override the clean target in your build.xml, you can still call the original target by shopsys_framework.clean. This works in direct calls (php phing shopsys_framework.clean), in the depends attribute of targets and for the <phingcall target="TARGET_NAME"> task.

For easier maintenance of your project in the future, it's always better to use the original target if it's possible in your use case. For example, if you want to call a new-task every time an overwritten-task is called, you can achieve it like this:

<!-- 'new-task' will be called BEFORE the original implementation -->
<target name="overwritten-task" depends="new-task,shopsys_framework.overwritten-task"/>

<!-- 'new-task' will be called AFTER the original implementation -->
<target name="overwritten-task" depends="shopsys_framework.overwritten-task,new-task"/>

Local customization of Phing properties (paths etc.)

You can customize any property defined in build.xml via a configuration file build/build.local.properties (use build/build.local.properties.dist as a template).

For example, you may define the path to your installed ChromeDriver (required for running acceptance tests) on Windows by:

path.chromedriver.executable=C:/Tools/chromedriver.exe

Since the build/build.local.properties file is not versioned, the changes will only apply to the local machine.


Tip

If you want to add new Phing targets into Shopsys Platform or modify existing ones, please read our guidelines before contributing.