Console Color

Console Color is a lightweight PHP 8.1+ library for adding color & other styles to text in the command line.

• Installation
• Basic Usage
  • Environment Variables
• Included Styles
  • Basic Styles
    • Text
    • Underline
    • Foreground & Background Color
  • 256 & True Color
  • Composite Styles

Installation

The Console Color library can be installed via Composer:

composer require bebat/console-color

Basic Usage

To apply style to a text you need an instance of BeBat\ConsoleColor\Style. With that you can apply a style object to some text:

use BeBat\ConsoleColor\Style;

$style = new Style();

echo $style->apply('This text is green', Style\Color::Green) . PHP_EOL;

The Style class will try to determine if console output can be styled automatically (more details on this can be found in the Environment Variables section below). By default, it looks at STDOUT and checks if it is a TTY. If you are using a different output type (such as a php:// I/O stream) you may pass that to Style() to have it determine if that stream supports styling:

use BeBat\ConsoleColor\Style;

$handle = fopen($something, 'w');
$style = new Style($handle);

fwrite($handle, $style->apply(
    'If $something points to a console this text will have a cyan background. ' .
    'Otherwise it will just be plain.',
    Style\BackgroundColor::Cyan,
));

You may use the force() method to make Style always apply styles to text, regardless of whether it thinks the output resource supports it:

use BeBat\ConsoleColor\Style;

$handle = fopen($something, 'w');
$style = new Style($handle);
$style->force();

fwrite($handle, $style->apply(
    'This text will always have styling applied to it.', Style\Text::Bold,
));

Environment Variables

In addition to checking if STDOUT is a TTY, Style will look at several environment variables to determine if styles should be applied, and what level of support the user's terminal has for styles.

• FORCE_COLOR - If the user has set FORCE_COLOR styling will be applied, even if Style doesn't think the output is a TTY.
• NO_COLOR - If the user has set NO_COLOR styling will be disabled. NO_COLOR takes precedence over FORCE_COLOR.
• TERM - Style will check TERM to see if it supports 256 colors.
• COLORTERM - If COLORTERM is set to truecolor then Style will apply RGB based colors.

Included Styles

Style::apply() accepts an instance of StyleInterface, and Console Color includes a number of styles that implement this interface.

To see what styles your terminal supports and what they look like, run the included sample.php file.

Basic Styles

Style\Text, Style\Underline, Style\Color, and Style\BackgroundColor are backed enumerations which helps to make Console Color's API extremely clean. These styles have the broadest support in most terminals (with some exceptions).

Text

• Style\Text::None - no style
• Style\Text::Bold - bold text (may also "brighten" the color in some terminals)
• Style\Text::Faint - dim text color
• Style\Text::Italic - italics
• Style\Text::Underline - underline
• Style\Text::Blink - blinking text (use wisely 😉)
• Style\Text::Reverse - swap foreground and background colors
• Style\Text::Concealed - hides the text (it is still present and can be selected)
• Style\Text::Strike - strikethrough, not supported in all terminals
• Style\Text::DoubleUnderline - double or bold underline, not supported in all terminals
• Style\Text::Overline - line over text, not supported in all terminals
• Style\Text::Superscript - superscript text, rarely supported
• Style\Text::Subscript - subscript text, rarely supported

Underline

Custom underline styles are not widely supported but some terminals do include them. Most, if not all, will fall back on just displaying a single underline.

• Style\Underline::Single
• Style\Underline::Double
• Style\Underline::Wavy
• Style\Underline::Dotted
• Style\Underline::Dashed

Foreground & Background Color

Style\Color and Style\BackgroundColor both support the same values and have an identical API.

• Style\Color::Black
• Style\Color::Red
• Style\Color::Green
• Style\Color::Yellow
• Style\Color::Blue
• Style\Color::Magenta
• Style\Color::Cyan
• Style\Color::White
• Style\Color::Default
• Style\Color::BrightBlack
• Style\Color::BrightRed
• Style\Color::BrightGreen
• Style\Color::BrightYellow
• Style\Color::BrightBlue
• Style\Color::BrightMagenta
• Style\Color::BrightCyan
• Style\Color::BrightWhite

256 & True Color

Most terminal programs support 256 color output, and many now also support 24-bit "true" colors. Console Color can apply those colors to the foreground, background, or underline color through the Style\Color256 and Style\ColorRGB classes.

• Style\Color256::foreground(int $code) - apply a 256 color to the text
• Style\Color256::background(int $code) - apply a 256 color to the background
• Style\Color256::underline(int $code) - apply a 256 color to an underline (see composite styles below)
• Style\ColorRGB::foreground(int $red, int $green, int $blue) - apply an RGB color to the text
• Style\ColorRGB::background(int $red, int $green, int $blue) - apply an RGB color to the background
• Style\ColorRGB::underline(int $red, int $green, int $blue) - apply an RGB color to an underline (see composite styles below)

Composite Styles

It's possible to apply more than one style to your text by using the Style\Composite() class. For example, to apply color to both the foreground and background:

use BeBat\ConsoleColor\Style;

$style = new Style();

echo $style->apply(
    'This text is white on red',
    new Style\Composite(Style\Color::BrightWhite, Style\BackgroundColor::Red),
) . PHP_EOL;

Style\Composite() is also required if you want to add color to an underline:

use BeBat\ConsoleColor\Style;

$style = new Style();

echo $style->apply(
    'This text has a typo',
    new Style\Composite(Style\Underline::Wavy, Style\ColorRGB::underline(255, 0, 0)),
) . PHP_EOL;

Style\Composite() can actually take as many styles as you need to apply:

use BeBat\ConsoleColor\Style;

$style = new Style();

echo $style->apply(
    "Please don't do this\n",
    new Style\Composite(
        Style\Text::Bold,
        Style\Text::Italic,
        Style\Text::Blink,
        Style\Color256::background(34),
        Style\Color256::foreground(227),
    ),
);