Configure your Bash Shell for Magento 2 CLI Commands

One of the major improvement in Magento 2 is the introduction of CLI commands based on Symfony Console Component.

CLI commands can perform multiple tasks. Some of them are:

• Installing Magento (and related tasks such as creating or updating the database schema, creating the deployment configuration, and so on)
• Clearing the cache
• Managing indexes, including reindexing
• Creating translation dictionaries and translation packages
• Generating non-existent classes such as factories and interceptors for plug-ins, generating the dependency injection configuration for the object manager.
• Deploying static view files
• Creating CSS from LESS
• Providing “plugin” capability for third-party developers

To invoke the CLI command:

php /path/to/your/magento2/bin/magento group:[subject:]action

To list all the available console commands:

php /path/to/your/magento2/bin/magento --list

which will output similar to:

In this article, we will discuss how to configure bash shell for Magento 2 CLI to increase your productivity.

Bash Configuration Tips for Magento 2 Console

1. Install Bash Completion

Refer to our previous article – Install Bash Completion for Mac OS-X, which shows how to enable the completion feature for shell commands just by pressing [TAB]

2. Create useful bash aliases

Alias for bin/magento: mage2
Edit your ~/.bash_profile and add the following code:

alias mage2 = "./bin/magento"

Now instead of using:

php bin/magento [options]

You can simply use:

mage2 [options]

(Command must be run from the root of Magento2 path)

Alias for enabling the module: mage2-module-enable
In order to enable the module in Magento2, you have to run following series of command:

php bin/magento module:enable Vendor1_Module1 VendorN_ModuleN --clear-static-content
php bin/magento setup:upgrade

To simplify this process, you can simply add the alias as:

mage2ModuleEnable() {
	mage2 module:enable "$@" --clear-static-content && mage2 setup:upgrade
}
alias mage2-module-enable="mage2ModuleEnable"

Now you can simply enable the module(s) by running:

mage2-module-enable Vendor1_Module1 Vendor2_Module2

These are just a few examples. You can add similarly if needed.

Isn’t that a smarter way of executing CLI command?
Note: Don’t forget to reload the bash after adding aliases:

source ~/.bash_profile

3. Install Magento2 Bash Completion

Some of the cool dudes in the Magento community are really doing amazing work. One of such work is magento2-bash-completion plugin.

In order to install this magento2-bash-completion, proceed as follow.
Download plugin to bash-completion hook folder

curl -o /usr/local/etc/bash_completion.d/magento2-bash-completion https://raw.githubusercontent.com/yvoronoy/magento2-bash-completion/master/magento2-bash-completion

Reload the shell

source /usr/local/etc/bash_completion.d/magento2-bash-completion

Time for Magic
Just write a few characters of command and press [TAB], you will see as per the following gif:

(Image Source: https://github.com/yvoronoy/magento2-bash-completion)

We will keep on updating this post with more cool bash tips for Magento 2 CLI, so keep your eye on it.

Do you have any useful tips on executing Magento2 CLI commands? Please do share in the comment.