The more I work with other languages like python and ruby I like their way how they work on problems. While PHP is very forgiving on errors, it is weak on the debugging side. It was missing a simple to use interactive shell for years. Python and Ruby have their ipython and iruby shell which give you a direct way to interact with the objects. No need to write a script and execute it afterwards.

Features

Requirements

Installation

## you might have to be root to install
$ pear install http://jan.kneschke.de/assets/2007/2/17/PHP_Shell-0.3.1.tgz

Usage

To check now a how a class is a behaving you first have to understand it.

Do you know the ArrayObject class which is a Class around the array() functions ?

>> $a = new ArrayObject( )
ArrayObject::__set_state(array(
))
>> $a->
__construct(
append(
count(
exchangeArray(
getArrayCopy(
getFlags(
getIterator(
getIteratorClass(
offsetExists(
offsetGet(
offsetSet(
offsetUnset(
setFlags(
setIteratorClass(
>> $a->append( 'a' )

>> $a->count( )
1
>> $a->offsetGet( 0 )
'a'

Tab-Completion

Tab-Completion works on

To use it type the first characters and press TAB. If there is only one possible match it will complete the name, otherwise pressing TAB again will show you a list of choices.

To get a list of all declared classes you can use getdeclaredclasses() from the PHP core functions:

>> get_<TAB>
>> get_<TAB><TAB>
get_browser(
...
get_declared_classes(
...
get_resource_type(
>> get_dec<TAB>
>> get_declared_<TAB><TAB>
get_declared_classes(
get_declared_interfaces(
get_defined_constants(
get_defined_functions(
get_defined_vars(
>> get_declared_classes( )

Discovery

The shell supports a shortcut to display DocComments for Classes, Methods and functions:

>> get_declared_classes()
array (
  0 => 'stdClass',
  1 => 'Exception',
  2 => 'ErrorException',
  ...
  89 => 'PHP_Shell',
)

>> ? PHP_Shell
'/**
* PHP_Shell
*
* a interactive PHP Shell with tab-completion and history
* it can catch FATAL errors before executing the code
*
...
*/'

>> PHP_Shell::<tab><tab>
PHP_Shell::__construct(
PHP_Shell::appendCode(
PHP_Shell::getCode(
PHP_Shell::getHelp(
PHP_Shell::getVerbose(
PHP_Shell::getVersion(
PHP_Shell::hasReadline(
PHP_Shell::input(
PHP_Shell::parse(
PHP_Shell::readline(
PHP_Shell::resetCode(

>> ? PHP_Shell::parse()
'/**
    * parse the PHP code
    *
    * we parse before we eval() the code to
    * - fetch fatal errors before they come up
    * - know about where we have to wait for closing braces
    *
    */'
>>

Changes

2006-05-29 - Version 0.2.7
  * added :set autoload and :set background
  * added ? $obj->method()
  * added help for internal PHP functions like ? fopen()
  * moved shell-wrapper to php-shell-cmd.php
  * removed die()
  * removed use of SHELL and SHELL_COLOUR
  * added PHP_Prototypes.php to extract
    the prototypes from the PHP-5.x source-code
2006-05-15 - Version 0.2.5
  * use PHPDoc instead of doxygen for the documentation
  * moved shell-commands like 'quit' and '?' into cmdHelp() and cmdQuit()
  * added registerCommand() to add user-supplied Commands
  * handle fopen("stdin")-failure in input() instead of a die() in the __construct()
  * PEAR PEPr
2006-05-15 - Version 0.2.3
  * disabled COLOURs by default
  * use PHP/Shell.php instead of PHP_Shell.php to follow PEARs naming conventions
2006-05-15 - Version 0.2.2
  * added handling of dynamic method calls as in $object->$method() or Class::$method()
2006-05-15 - Version 0.2.1
  * migrated the PEAR package.xml 2.0
  * added a 'php-shell.sh' for Unix systems and 'php-shell.bat' for Windows
  * disabled max-execution-time
2006-05-14 - Version 0.2.0
  * built a PEAR package
  * added PHPUnit testcases
2006-05-13
  * added more known PHP-tokens
  * added support for object[...]->method()
  * moved shell to the class-file
2006-05-08
  * added readline support
  * added tab-completion
2006-05-05
  * first release

Usage

Since PHP_Shell 0.2.1 a shell script is added to start the shell

$ php-shell.sh

Documentation

Alternatives

the php-shell is not the first attempt to give PHP a interactive shell: