Problem
You have a console application and want to set the request.
Solution
Use the App::setRequestForConsoleEnvironment().
Usually, you don't need the whole HTTP layer Laravel provides when developing console utilities. But when you do, you can use this command.
App::setRequestForConsoleEnvironment();
Discussion
This is most handy with unit testing.
When unit testing sometimes it's nice to "fake" a request environment.
If you're deriving your unit tests from the file Laravel provides for you (app/tests/TestCase.php) the App::setRequestForConsoleEnvironment() is called automatically for you.
