Symfony — CLI and bin/console for Symfony Projects

Symfony is one of the leading PHP frameworks for web applications and APIs. Day to day you work with two tools: the separate symfony CLI (the Symfony binary) starts the local development server, scaffolds new projects and bundles tooling around Symfony Cloud. For everything inside your application – code generation, database migrations, cache, routing and debugging – you use php bin/console, the framework's Console component. This guide collects the commands you reach for most often in everyday project work.

General

php bin/console list — List all available commands.

php bin/console list

php bin/console help <command> — Show help for a specific command.

php bin/console help make:entity

php bin/console about — Show information about the current project.

php bin/console about

symfony serve — Start the Symfony local web server.

symfony serve -d

symfony new <name> — Create a new Symfony project.

symfony new my-project --webapp

Code Generation (make:)

php bin/console make:entity — Create or update a Doctrine entity class.

php bin/console make:entity Product

php bin/console make:controller — Create a new controller class.

php bin/console make:controller ProductController

php bin/console make:form — Create a new form type class.

php bin/console make:form ProductType

php bin/console make:migration — Generate a migration based on entity changes.

php bin/console make:migration

php bin/console make:command — Create a new console command class.

php bin/console make:command app:send-emails

php bin/console make:subscriber — Create a new event subscriber class.

php bin/console make:subscriber ExceptionSubscriber

php bin/console make:twig-extension — Create a Twig extension.

php bin/console make:twig-extension AppExtension

php bin/console make:voter — Create a new security voter.

php bin/console make:voter ProductVoter

Database & Doctrine

php bin/console doctrine:database:create — Create the configured database.

php bin/console doctrine:database:create

php bin/console doctrine:migrations:migrate — Run pending database migrations.

php bin/console doctrine:migrations:migrate

php bin/console doctrine:migrations:status — Show migration status.

php bin/console doctrine:migrations:status

php bin/console doctrine:schema:validate — Validate the mapping files and database schema.

php bin/console doctrine:schema:validate

php bin/console doctrine:schema:update --dump-sql — Show SQL needed to update database schema.

php bin/console doctrine:schema:update --dump-sql

php bin/console doctrine:fixtures:load — Load data fixtures into the database.

php bin/console doctrine:fixtures:load --append

php bin/console dbal:run-sql '<sql>' — Execute raw SQL directly.

php bin/console dbal:run-sql 'SELECT count(*) FROM product'

Cache & Config

php bin/console cache:clear — Clear the application cache.

php bin/console cache:clear

php bin/console cache:warmup — Warm up the cache.

php bin/console cache:warmup

php bin/console cache:pool:clear <pool> — Clear a specific cache pool.

php bin/console cache:pool:clear cache.app

php bin/console debug:config <bundle> — Show resolved configuration for a bundle.

php bin/console debug:config framework

php bin/console config:dump-reference <bundle> — Show full default configuration reference.

php bin/console config:dump-reference security

Debug & Routes

php bin/console debug:router — List all registered routes.

php bin/console debug:router

php bin/console debug:router <name> — Show details of a specific route.

php bin/console debug:router app_product_show

php bin/console router:match <path> — Show which route matches a given URL path.

php bin/console router:match /product/42

php bin/console debug:container — List all services in the container.

php bin/console debug:container --show-arguments

php bin/console debug:container <service> — Show details of a specific service.

php bin/console debug:container App\Service\Mailer

php bin/console debug:event-dispatcher — List all registered event listeners.

php bin/console debug:event-dispatcher kernel.request

php bin/console debug:twig — Show Twig functions, filters, and globals.

php bin/console debug:twig

Messenger & Security

php bin/console messenger:consume <transport> — Consume messages from a transport (queue worker).

php bin/console messenger:consume async --limit=10

php bin/console messenger:failed:show — Show failed messages.

php bin/console messenger:failed:show

php bin/console messenger:failed:retry — Retry failed messages.

php bin/console messenger:failed:retry

php bin/console security:hash-password — Hash a plain-text password.

php bin/console security:hash-password

php bin/console secrets:set <name> — Set a secret in the vault.

php bin/console secrets:set DATABASE_PASSWORD

Conclusion

Between the symfony CLI and bin/console you have nearly everything a Symfony project needs day to day – from the local server to code generation, cache and routing. The local server (symfony serve) is meant for development only; in production your app runs behind a real web server such as nginx or Apache with PHP-FPM. Be careful with data-changing Doctrine commands: doctrine:migrations:migrate along with doctrine:database:drop and doctrine:schema:drop can delete data irreversibly – take a backup first and use --no-interaction in production only deliberately and after review. cache:clear is harmless, but in production it should run in the correct environment. The console is extensible: with make:command you build your own commands in the same style.