Manual:Shell.php/en

shell.php is a maintenance script that is located in the  directory that provides a REPL shell you can use to play live with MediaWiki objects and functions. It is based on PsySH; it replaces which is less robust and has fewer features.

Beyond the ability to evaluate PHP statements, functionality includes handling errors and fatals in a way that does not break the shell, examining object internals, source code and documentation via reflection, external editor integration and more.

Command execution and error handling
 $ php maintenance/shell.php Psy Shell v0.8.5 (PHP 5.6.30-0+deb8u1 — cli) by Justin Hileman

>>> User::newFromName('Foo') => User {#1075 +mId: null, +mName: "Foo", +mRealName: null, +mEmail: null, +mTouched: null, +mEmailAuthenticated: null, +mOptionsLoaded: false, +mFrom: "name", +mBlockedby: -1, +mRights: null, +mHideName: null, +mOptions: null, +mBlock: null, }

>>> $_->mQuickTouched PHP Error: Cannot access protected property User::$mQuickTouched in Psy Shell code on line 2

>>> sudo $_->mQuickTouched => null

>>> User::newFromName( true ) InvalidArgumentException with message '$text must be a string.'

>>> wtf InvalidArgumentException with message '$text must be a string.' -- 0:  at includes/Title.php:283 1: Title::newFromText at includes/user/User.php:1255 2: User::getCanonicalName at includes/user/User.php:588

Use wtf -a to see 10 more lines

Reflection
 >>> ls Message Class Constants: FORMAT_BLOCK_PARSE, FORMAT_ESCAPED, FORMAT_PARSE, FORMAT_PLAIN, FORMAT_TEXT Class Methods: __construct, __toString, bitrateParam, bitrateParams, content, durationParam, durationParams, escaped, exists, expiryParam, expiryParams, getFormat, getKey, getKeysToTry, getLanguage, getParams, getTitle, inContentLanguage, inLanguage, isBlank, isDisabled, isMultiKey, listParam, newFallbackSequence, newFromKey, newFromSpecifier, numParam, numParams, params, parse, parseAsBlock, plain, plaintextParam, plaintextParams, rawParam, rawParams, serialize, setContext, setInterfaceMessageFlag, sizeParam, sizeParams, text, timeperiodParam, timeperiodParams, title, toString, unserialize, useDatabase

>>> doc Message::setContext public function setContext(IContextSource $context)

Description: Set the language and the title from a context object

Param: IContextSource $context

Return: Message $this

Since: 1.19

>>> show Message::setContext > 724|       public function setContext( IContextSource $context ) { 725|               $this->inLanguage( $context->getLanguage ); 726|               $this->title( $context->getTitle ); 727|               $this->interface = true; 728|    729|                return $this; 730|       }

Debug output
 $ php maintenance/shell.php -d 2 [debug] [DBReplication] Wikimedia\Rdbms\LBFactory::getChronologyProtector: using request info { "IPAddress": "", "UserAgent": "", "ChronologyProtection": "true" } [debug] [DBConnection] Wikimedia\Rdbms\LoadBalancer::openConnection: calling initLB before first connection. [debug] [DBConnection] Connected to database 0 at '127.0.0.1'. [debug] [DBQuery] wiki SHOW /* Wikimedia\Rdbms\DatabaseMysqlBase::serverIsReadOnly */ GLOBAL VARIABLES LIKE 'read_only' [debug] [DBQuery] SHOW GLOBAL VARIABLES LIKE 'read_only' Psy Shell v0.8.5 (PHP 5.6.30-0+deb8u1 — cli) by Justin Hileman

>>> wfMessage("Recentchanges")->text [debug] [CryptRand] mcrypt_create_iv generated 20 bytes of randomness. [debug] [CryptRand] 0 bytes of randomness leftover in the buffer. [info] [MessageCache] MessageCache::load: Loading en... local cache is empty, got from global cache => "Recent changes"

Editline integration
PsySH can integrate with readline / editline (PHP usually comes pre-built with the latter).

A sample  for history search: