Laravel: run standalone console script without touching the project code

readme.txt

Sometimes there is a need to execute one-time set of commands without changing the project code.

For the simplest cases, Laravel has amazing `artisan tinker` command. But what if you want a little more than doing a single line of code, or you want to apply it on several servers. 
Here for these short scripts, I wrote this snippet.

example.php

<?php
/*
 * The code mostly peeped in artisan executable file.
 * Put this file to project root (one level above DocumentRoot) and run
 * $ php example.php
 */
if (php_sapi_name() !== 'cli') {
    die('This file can be executed from console only');
}

require_once __DIR__.'/vendor/autoload.php';
/* @var $app \Illuminate\Foundation\Application */
/* @var $kernel \App\Http\Kernel */
$app = require_once __DIR__.'/bootstrap/app.php';
$kernel = $app->make(Illuminate\Contracts\Console\Kernel::class);
$status = 0; // success
$input = new Symfony\Component\Console\Input\ArgvInput;
$output = new Symfony\Component\Console\Output\ConsoleOutput;
$kernel->bootstrap();

$num = DB::update("UPDATE `users` SET `nickname` = 'artoodetoo' WHERE `nickname`='r2d2'");
$output->writeln("{$num} nickname(s) updated in `users`");
// ...
// ... other usefull payload ...
// ...

$kernel->terminate($input, $status);
exit($status);

I just used the knowledge gained here to create a one off script to setup the admin account. Intent is to delete the file in production after using it only once.

Thank you.