One of the most powerful, yet unknown, features of CakePHP is its shell framework. It provides applications with all that is required for building command-line tools, which can be used to perform intensive tasks and any other type of non-interactive processing.

This chapter introduces the reader to CakePHP shells by starting with the process of building basic shells, and then moving on to more advanced features, such as sending e-mails and running controller actions from shells. It finishes by presenting the robot plugin, which offers a fully featured solution for scheduling and running tasks.