Laravel 11: about and docs Commands

This article is for Day 1 of the Advent Calendar 2024: Investigating All Artisan Commands in Laravel 11.

In this post, I investigated the about and docs commands.

Environment

• PHP 8.4.1
• laravel/laravel 11.3.3
• laravel/framework 11.33.2

about

Displays basic information about the application.

php artisan about

When executed, it displays information across three sections: Environment, Cache, and Drivers.

Option	Description
--only[=ONLY]	Displays only the specified section
--json	Displays in JSON format

• You can specify sections with --only regardless of case.
  You can also specify multiple sections by separating them with commas.

php artisan about --only=Environment

php artisan about --only=environment,Cache

• By using --json, information is displayed in JSON format; the --only option can also be used in conjunction with it.

php artisan about --json

php artisan about --only=Environment --json

docs

Displays the Laravel documentation.

php artisan docs [<page> [<section>]]

When executed, a list for selecting the documentation you want to view will appear.

Upon selection, the URL of the documentation is displayed.
Additionally, depending on the execution environment, the selected documentation may be opened in a browser.

Argument	Description
page	Specifies the documentation to open
section	Specifies the section within the documentation to open

• You can open documentation by specifying just the page, or both the page and section.
• You can also specify just a part of the text; in that case, the first matching documentation found will be opened.

php artisan docs providers

php artisan docs database database-transactions

php artisan docs vi