Enhance PHP Command-Line Tools with AnsiKit

Developers often look for ways to make their terminal applications more interactive and user-friendly. With AnsiKit, you can easily enhance PHP Command-Line Tools with colors, animations, and interactive components. Whether you’re building CLI-based automation scripts, deployment utilities, or server management tools, AnsiKit gives your PHP Command-Line Tools a professional and engaging look. This library helps developers create visually appealing terminal UIs without complex dependencies.

What AnsiKit Offers

AnsiKit provides an impressive range of features that make it an excellent choice for building modern PHP Command-Line Tools. It supports tables, spinners, progress bars, inputs, and choice selections, all with clean and colorful ANSI escape sequences.

You can even create formatted tables to display data, use progress bars to show task completion, spinners to indicate ongoing processes, and interactive input or choice menus for user selection. These features help transform static PHP Command-Line Tools into something megical.

Why It’s Required and Use Cases

Modern developers need more than plain text output in CLI tools. Enhancing PHP Command-Line Tools with AnsiKit allows you to build interactive dashboards, improve user feedback, and make your automation scripts more professional. For example, DevOps teams can use it to display server health data in a table, developers can add progress bars to indicate installation status.

AnsiKit Package Installation

Before you can enhance your PHP Command-Line Tools with AnsiKit, you need to install the package using Composer. Run the following command in your project directory:

composer require ajaxray/ansikit

Once installed, you can start using AnsiKit’s widgets like tables, inputs, progress bars, spinners, and choices in your PHP CLI applications.

Display Data with Tables

Tables make data presentation in CLI applications clean and organized. You can display user data, file statistics, or system info in a structured format.

use Ajayray\AnsiKit\Widgets\Table;

$table = new Table();
$table->setHeaders(['ID', 'Name', 'Status']);
$table->setRows([
    [1, 'Database Backup', 'Completed'],
    [2, 'Server Update', 'Pending'],
    [3, 'Log Rotation', 'Completed'],
]);
$table->render();

Get User Input

Interactive input lets your PHP CLI tool accept user responses directly in the terminal, making scripts more dynamic and user-friendly. Let’s see an example where we allow the user to create a directory from a given name. Using AnsiKit, we can highlight messages in color, showing success in green and warnings in yellow, to make feedback clear and visually appealing.

use Ajayray\AnsiKit\Widgets\Input;
use Ajayray\AnsiKit\Style;

$dirName = Input::prompt('Enter the directory name to create: ');

if (!is_dir($dirName)) {
    mkdir($dirName, 0755, true);
    echo Style::green("Directory '$dirName' created successfully.");
} else {
    echo Style::yellow("Directory '$dirName' already exists.");
}

Show Task Progress

Progress bars help visualize task completion like file uploads or data imports in your PHP Command-Line Tools.

use Ajayray\AnsiKit\Widgets\ProgressBar;

$bar = new ProgressBar(100);
for ($i = 0; $i <= 100; $i++) {
    $bar->advance();
    usleep(50000);
}
$bar->finish();

Loading Spinner

Spinners are ideal for indicating loading states while performing background operations such as API calls or database updates.

use Ajayray\AnsiKit\Widgets\Spinner;

$spinner = new Spinner('Processing data...');
$spinner->start();
// Some heavy operations like processing task queue.
$spinner->stop('Task completed!');

Create Choice Menu

Choice menus simplify decision-making by letting users select from predefined options.

use Ajayray\AnsiKit\Widgets\Choice;

$choice = new Choice('Select environment:', ['Development', 'Testing', 'Production']);
$selected = $choice->ask();
echo "Deploying to $selected environment.";

Conclusion

Improving PHP Command-Line Tools with AnsiKit helps developers deliver better user experiences, clearer outputs, and modern interactivity in the terminal. AnsiKit provides ready-to-use widgets like tables, inputs, progress bars, spinners, and choices. Using these widgets, developers can create efficient and elegant CLI applications.

You can also explore Top 25 Useful Linux Commands that Everybody Should Know to make your terminal tasks easier and more efficient.

Codewolfy