.. index::
   single: Console; Sending emails
   single: Console; Generating URLs

How to generate URLs and send Emails from the Console
=====================================================

Unfortunately, the command line context does not know about your VirtualHost
or domain name. This means that if you generate absolute URLs within a
Console Command you'll probably end up with something like ``http://localhost/foo/bar``
which is not very useful.

To fix this, you need to configure the "request context", which is a fancy
way of saying that you need to configure your environment so that it knows
what URL it should use when generating URLs.

There are two ways of configuring the request context: at the application level
and per Command.

Configuring the Request Context Globally
----------------------------------------

To configure the Request Context - which is used by the URL Generator - you can
redefine the parameters it uses as default values to change the default host
(localhost) and scheme (http). You can also configure the base path if Symfony
is not running in the root directory.

Note that this does not impact URLs generated via normal web requests, since those
will override the defaults.

.. configuration-block::

    .. code-block:: yaml

        # app/config/parameters.yml
        parameters:
            router.request_context.host: example.org
            router.request_context.scheme: https
            router.request_context.base_url: my/path

    .. code-block:: xml

        <!-- app/config/parameters.xml -->
        <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

        <container xmlns="http://symfony.com/schema/dic/services"
            xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">

            <parameters>
                <parameter key="router.request_context.host">example.org</parameter>
                <parameter key="router.request_context.scheme">https</parameter>
                <parameter key="router.request_context.base_url">my/path</parameter>
            </parameters>
        </container>

    .. code-block:: php

        // app/config/config_test.php
        $container->setParameter('router.request_context.host', 'example.org');
        $container->setParameter('router.request_context.scheme', 'https');
        $container->setParameter('router.request_context.base_url', 'my/path');

Configuring the Request Context per Command
-------------------------------------------

To change it only in one command you can simply fetch the Request Context
from the ``router`` service and override its settings::

   // src/Acme/DemoBundle/Command/DemoCommand.php

   // ...
   class DemoCommand extends ContainerAwareCommand
   {
       protected function execute(InputInterface $input, OutputInterface $output)
       {
           $context = $this->getContainer()->get('router')->getContext();
           $context->setHost('example.com');
           $context->setScheme('https');
           $context->setBaseUrl('my/path');

           // ... your code here
       }
   }

Using Memory Spooling
---------------------

Sending emails in a console command works the same way as described in the
:doc:`/cookbook/email/email` cookbook except if memory spooling is used.

When using memory spooling (see the :doc:`/cookbook/email/spool` cookbook for more
information), you must be aware that because of how Symfony handles console
commands, emails are not sent automatically. You must take care of flushing
the queue yourself. Use the following code to send emails inside your
console command::

    $message = new \Swift_Message();
    
    // ... prepare the message
    
    $container = $this->getContainer();
    $mailer = $container->get('mailer');
    
    $mailer->send($message);
    
    // now manually flush the queue
    $spool = $mailer->getTransport()->getSpool();
    $transport = $container->get('swiftmailer.transport.real');

    $spool->flushQueue($transport);

Another option is to create an environment which is only used by console
commands and uses a different spooling method.

.. note::

    Taking care of the spooling is only needed when memory spooling is used.
    If you are using file spooling (or no spooling at all), there is no need
    to flush the queue manually within the command.