title: Laravel - Pass arguments to php artisan down
body: <p>I've got an interesting problem I'd like to try and solve. Laravel has a built in "Maintenance Mode", which can be activated by calling <code>php artisan down</code> in the root folder of the application. There's a setting in app/start/global.php where you can assign the view or response it makes. In my application, I have it doing this:</p>
  
  <pre><code>App::down(function()
  {
    // ETA Format: YYYY-MM-DD HH-MM-SS. Leave as "" to pass indeterminate time.
    return View::make("maintenance", array("code" =&gt; 503, 
    "message" =&gt; "Service Unavailable", 
    "eta" =&gt; "2014-11-07 13:30:00"));
  });
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>What this does is show a nice, clean "We'll be right back" screen, with the status message and estimated time to completion shown. Notice that I've hardcoded some parameters that get passed to the view: </p>
  
  <pre><code>code -&gt; The http status code I want displayed
  message -&gt; A message about the nature of the disruption
  eta -&gt; A timestamp of the estimated completion time
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>What I'm wondering is, is there a way I can modify <code>php artisan down</code> where I can pass it some parameters? For example, I want to try something like this:</p>
  
  <pre><code>php artisan down --eta="2014-11-07 13:30:00" --code="503"
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>So I don't have to manually code these parameters everytime I put the app into maintenance mode. I've read the docs on Laravel regarding creating artisan commands, but there's no documentation on modifying existing commands, or duplicating them and adding functionality.</p>
  
  <p>If anyone has any insight into this, please let me know.</p>