PHP-watcher

PHP-watcher helps develop long-running PHP applications by automatically restarting them when file changes in the directory are detected.

Here's how it looks like:

PHP-watcher does not require any additional changes to your code or method of development. php-watcher is a replacement wrapper for php, to use PHP -watcher replace the word php in the command line when executing your script.

Installation

You can install this package globally like this:

composer global require littlesqx/php-watcher

After that phpunit-watcher watch can be run in any directory on your system.

Alternatively, you can install the package locally as a dev dependency in your project:

composer require littlesqx/php-watcher --dev

Locally installed you can run it with vendor/bin/php-watcher.

Usage

All the examples assume you've installed the package globally. If you opted for the local installation prepend vendor/bin/ everywhere where php-watcher is mentioned.

PHP-watcher wraps your application, so you can pass all the arguments you would normally pass to your app:

php-watcher [your php app]

Using PHP-Watcher is simple. If your application accepts a host and port as the arguments, I can start it using option --arguments:

php-watcher server.php --arguments localhost --arguments 8080

Any output from this script is prefixed with [php-watcher], otherwise all output from your application, errors included, will be echoed out as expected.

Config files

PHP-Watcher supports customization of its behavior with config files. The file for options may be named .php-watcher.yml, php-watcher.yml or php -watcher.yml.dist. The tool will look for a file in the current working directory in that order. An alternative local configuration file can be specified with the --config <file> option.

The specificity is as follows, so that a command line argument will always override the config file settings:

• command line arguments
• local config

A config file can take any of the command line arguments, for example:

watch:
  - src
  - config
extensions:
  - php
  - yml
ignore:
  - tests

Monitoring multiple directories

By default, PHP-Watcher monitors the current working directory. If you want to take control of that option, use the --watch option to add specific paths:

php-watcher --watch src --watch config server.php

Now PHP-Watcher will only restart if there are changes in the ./src or ./config directories. By default traverses sub-directories, so there's no need to explicitly include them.

Specifying extension watch list

By default, PHP-Watcher looks for files with the .php extension. If you use the --ext option and monitor app,yml PHP-Watcher will monitor files with the extension of .php and .yml:

php-watcher server.php --ext=php,js

Now PHP-Watcher will restart on any changes to files in the directory (or subdirectories) with the extensions .php, .yml.

Ignoring files

By default, PHP-Watcher will only restart when a .php file changes. In some cases you may want to ignore some specific files, directories or file patterns, to prevent PHP-Watcher from prematurely restarting your application.

This can be done via the command line:

php-watcher server.php --ignore public/ --ignore tests/

Or specific files can be ignored:

php-watcher server.php --ignore src/config.php

Patterns can also be ignored (but be sure to quote the arguments):

php-watcher server.php --ignore 'src/config/*.php'

Note that by default, PHP-Watcher ignores all dot and VCS files.

Delaying restarting

In some situations, you may want to wait until a number of files have changed . The timeout before checking for new file changes is 1 second. If you're uploading a number of files and it's taking some number of seconds, this could cause your app to restart multiple times unnecessarily.

To add an extra throttle, or delay restarting, use the --delay option:

php-watcher server.php --delay 10 

For more precision, use a float:

php-watcher server.php --delay 2.5 

Default executable

By default, PHP-Watcher uses php bin executable to run your scripts. If you want to provide your own executable use --exec option or executable param in config file. This is particularly useful if you're working with several PHP versions.

executable: php

or using CLI:

php-watcher server.php --exec php7

License

MIT http://rem.mit-license.org

How can I thank you?

Why not star this GitHub repo? I'd love the attention! Or, you can donate to my project on PayPal:

(Original Author: @seregazhuk)

Thanks!