Here is a quick example for anyone interested in getting up and running with it.

<?php
require_once 'Console/CommandLine.php';

$parser = new Console_CommandLine();
$parser->description = 'A fantastic command line program that does nothing.';
$parser->version = '1.5.0';
$parser->addOption('filename', array(
    'short_name'  => '-f',
    'long_name'   => '--file',
    'description' => 'write report to FILE',
    'help_name'   => 'FILE',
    'action'      => 'StoreString'
));
$parser->addOption('quiet', array(
    'short_name'  => '-q',
    'long_name'   => '--quiet',
    'description' => "don't print status messages to stdout",
    'action'      => 'StoreTrue'
));
try {
    $result = $parser->parse();
    // do something with the result object
    print_r($result->options);
    print_r($result->args);
} catch (Exception $exc) {
    $parser->displayError($exc->getMessage());
}

gives the output for yourscript -help

A fantastic command line program that does nothing.

Usage:
  tmp.php [options]

Options:
  -f FILE, --file=FILE  write report to FILE
  -q, --quiet           don't print status messages to stdout
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  --version             show the program version and exit

Details for options/configuration: http://pear.php.net/manual/en/package.console.console-commandline.options.php

Details for command line arguments: http://pear.php.net/manual/en/package.console.console-commandline.arguments.php

Details for extending lib: http://pear.php.net/manual/en/package.console.console-commandline.extending.php

So the next step was to make a pear package out of it so that other projects could extend out of it and also to free the developer of the include path hell that php offers and as part of the exercise, I ran my code past php code sniffer. However good the tool is, its lacking on part of documentation (or atleast i couldn’t find much) and its obscure error messages only meant that I would have to dig into the code to find out what exactly it was looking for. So here are some of them of the obscure ones:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FOUND 2 ERROR(S) AND 0 WARNING(S) AFFECTING 1 LINE(S)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 2 | ERROR | Missing file doc comment
 2 | ERROR | Missing class doc comment
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

There isn’t any documentation that points out what it actually means with file document and class document. It turns out that it needs documentation about the class as well as the class, usually the same if there is only one level. Here is what I put in my class file to satisfy that.

/**
* IPC_Test_Config
*
*
* @category Testing
* @package  IPC.Test
* @author   Rajat Pandit <rajat_pandit@lalaland.com>
* @license  http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html GNU General Public License
* @link     http://ipcmedia.com
*/
/**
* IPC_Test_Config
*
* @category Testing
* @package  IPC.Test
* @author   Rajat Pandit <rajat_pandit@lalaland.com>
* @license  http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html GNU General Public License
* @link     http://ipcmedia.com
*/

Here’s the next one:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FOUND 0 ERROR(S) AND 1 WARNING(S) AFFECTING 1 LINE(S)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 10 | WARNING | PHP version not specified
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Now typically you would expect another @tag but its just * PHP version 5 that you need to add. This is what the final version looks like:

/**
* IPC_Test_Config
*
* PHP version 5
*
* @category Testing
* @package  IPC.Test
* @author   Rajat Pandit <rajat_pandit@ipcmedia.com>
* @license  http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html GNU General Public License
* @link     http://ipcmedia.com
*/
/**
* IPC_Test_Config
*
* @category Testing
* @package  IPC.Test
* @author   Rajat Pandit <rajat_pandit@ipcmedia.com>
* @license  http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html GNU General Public License
* @link     http://ipcmedia.com
*/
class IPC_Test_Config

I hope this post if useful for anyone who wants to use a code sniffer to ensure that the quality of code is kept to its highest.

I have been playing around with CURL and its awesomeness for a potential idea and had to use some data retrieved by sending a ICMP packet to the host. This was required to check to check stuff like host availability, packet loss etc. The standard stuff. Doing this would be fairly straightforward if you wanted to use the exec function. However getting the data back as a data structure can be a pain.
Pear has an interesting packge Net/Ping does does all that very neatly for you. Here is the code snippet for that.

<?php
     require_once "Net/Ping.php";
     $ping = Net_Ping::factory();
     if(PEAR::isError($ping)) {
      echo $ping->getMessage();
    } else {
      /* Number of packets to send */
      $ping->setArgs(array('count' => 4));
      $rawData = $ping->ping('rajatpandit.com');
      print_r($rawData);
    }

?>

and the data that you get back, is a pretty useful structured array.

Net_Ping_Result Object
(
    [_icmp_sequence] => Array
        (
            [1] => 310
            [2] => 300
            [3] => 318
            [4] => 301
        )

    [_target_ip] => 67.205.0.93
    [_bytes_per_request] => 32
    [_bytes_total] => 128
    [_ttl] => 238
    [_raw_data] => Array
        (
            [0] =>
            [1] => Pinging rajatpandit.com [67.205.0.93] with 32 bytes of data:
            [2] =>
            [3] => Reply from 67.205.0.93: bytes=32 time=310ms TTL=238
            [4] => Reply from 67.205.0.93: bytes=32 time=300ms TTL=238
            [5] => Reply from 67.205.0.93: bytes=32 time=318ms TTL=238
            [6] => Reply from 67.205.0.93: bytes=32 time=301ms TTL=238
            [7] =>
            [8] => Ping statistics for 67.205.0.93:
            [9] =>     Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
            [10] => Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
            [11] =>     Minimum = 300ms, Maximum = 318ms, Average = 307ms
        )

    [_sysname] => windows
    [_round_trip] => Array
        (
            [min] => 300
            [max] => 318
            [avg] => 307
        )

    [_transmitted] => 4
    [_received] => 4
    [_loss] => 0
)

Sweet!