How to echo to console in Laravel and Artisan?

Question

I was curious, I'm using Laravel and Artisan for my migrations. Is there a method to output information to the console? I can't seem to find any information on this. For example:

<?php  class Generate_Sample_Users{      public function up(){          //Echo to console here         echo "Creating sample users...";          $generator = new Sample_Data();         $user_count = 30;         $users = array();           for($i=0; $i < $user_count; $i++){             array_push($users, $generator->generate_user($i));         }          DB::table('users')->insert($users);     }      public function down(){         DB::table('users')->delete();     }  } 

Answer 1

Don't know if you are using Laravel 3 or Laravel 4, and if its also possible in Laravel 3, but i found this in the docs.

$this->info('Creating sample users...'); 

EDIT

If you switch to database seeds you can use this to display a message

$this->command->info('Creating sample users...');