Artisan Console and Development Workflow

Artisan: Your Command-Line Companion

Artisan is Laravel's CLI tool that automates repetitive development tasks. Mastering Artisan commands will dramatically speed up your workflow.

Essential Artisan Commands

# Generate code
php artisan make:model Post -mfc    # Model + Migration + Factory + Controller
php artisan make:controller Api/PostController --api
php artisan make:middleware EnsureAdmin
php artisan make:request StorePostRequest

# Database
php artisan migrate                 # Run pending migrations
php artisan migrate:rollback        # Undo last batch
php artisan migrate:fresh --seed    # Drop all, re-migrate, seed
php artisan db:seed                 # Run database seeders

# Development
php artisan serve                   # Start dev server
php artisan tinker                  # Interactive REPL
php artisan route:list              # Show all routes
php artisan optimize:clear          # Clear all caches

Tinker: Interactive PHP Shell

Tinker lets you interact with your application in real-time:

php artisan tinker

>>> $user = User::factory()->create(['name' => 'John']);
>>> $user->posts()->count();
>>> Post::where('published', true)->latest()->first();
>>> Cache::flush();

Creating Custom Commands

php artisan make:command SendWeeklyNewsletter

class SendWeeklyNewsletter extends Command
{
    protected $signature = 'newsletter:send
                            {--test : Send only to test subscribers}';

    protected $description = 'Send the weekly newsletter to all subscribers';

    public function handle(): int
    {
        $subscribers = $this->option('test')
            ? Subscriber::where('is_test', true)->get()
            : Subscriber::active()->get();

        $bar = $this->output->createProgressBar($subscribers->count());

        foreach ($subscribers as $subscriber) {
            Mail::to($subscriber)->queue(new WeeklyNewsletter());
            $bar->advance();
        }

        $bar->finish();
        $this->newLine();
        $this->info("Sent to {$subscribers->count()} subscribers.");

        return Command::SUCCESS;
    }
}

Schedule it in routes/console.php:

Schedule::command('newsletter:send')->weeklyOn(1, '8:00');

Artisan turns hours of manual work into seconds of automated commands.