archived-symfony-docs/console/calling_commands.rst

How to Call Other Commands
==========================

If a command depends on another one being run before it you can call in the
console command itself. This is useful if a command depends on another command
or if you want to create a "meta" command that runs a bunch of other commands
(for instance, all commands that need to be run when the project's code has
changed on the production servers: clearing the cache, generating Doctrine
proxies, dumping web assets, ...).

Calling a command from another one is straightforward::

    use Symfony\Component\Console\Input\ArrayInput;
    use Symfony\Component\Console\Input\InputInterface;
    use Symfony\Component\Console\Output\OutputInterface;
    // ...

    protected function execute(InputInterface $input, OutputInterface $output)
    {
        $command = $this->getApplication()->find('demo:greet');

        $arguments = [
            'name'    => 'Fabien',
            '--yell'  => true,
        ];

        $greetInput = new ArrayInput($arguments);
        $returnCode = $command->run($greetInput, $output);

        // ...
    }

First, you :method:`Symfony\\Component\\Console\\Application::find` the
command you want to run by passing the command name. Then, you need to create
a new :class:`Symfony\\Component\\Console\\Input\\ArrayInput` with the arguments
and options you want to pass to the command.

Eventually, calling the ``run()`` method actually runs the command and returns
the returned code from the command (return value from command's ``execute()``
method).

.. tip::

    If you want to suppress the output of the executed command, pass a
    :class:`Symfony\\Component\\Console\\Output\\NullOutput` as the second
    argument to ``$command->run()``.

.. caution::

    Note that all the commands will run in the same process and some of Symfony's
    built-in commands may not work well this way. For instance, the ``cache:clear``
    and ``cache:warmup`` commands change some class definitions, so running
    something after them is likely to break.

.. note::

    Most of the times, calling a command from code that is not executed on the
    command line is not a good idea. The main reason is that the command's
    output is optimized for the console and not to be passed to other commands.