Interactive WordPress Debugging

A new command landed in WP-CLIWP-CLI WP-CLI is the Command Line Interface for WordPress, used to do administrative and development tasks in a programmatic way. The project page is http://wp-cli.org/ https://make.wordpress.org/cli/ a few days ago, called shell. It was inspired by an older project called wpshell.

When you run wp shell, a REPL will start, in which you can run any WordPress function.

The major advantage over wp eval and wp eval-file is that it’s interactive: you immediately see the result of the previous command; it’s also stored in the special $_ variable, which you can use in the next command and so on.

Here’s a contrived example session:

scribu@air:~/wp/core$ wp shell
Type "exit" to close session.
wp> get_bloginfo('wpurl')
'http://wp.dev/core'
wp> $_ . '/feed/'
'http://wp.dev/core/feed/'
wp> exit
scribu@air:~/wp/core$

wp shell will be available in the 0.7 release of WP-CLI, but if you want to try it out right now, clone the latest version from githubGitHub GitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged by the repository owner. https://github.com/. If you have suggestions for making it better, don’t hesitate to open issues and pull requests.

New Home

Welcome to the new website for the WP-CLIWP-CLI WP-CLI is the Command Line Interface for WordPress, used to do administrative and development tasks in a programmatic way. The project page is http://wp-cli.org/ https://make.wordpress.org/cli/ project!

wp-cli already has a public code repository, an issue tracker and a wiki. The only thing that was missing was a blog for publishing release notes and other news.

Since githubGitHub GitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged by the repository owner. https://github.com/ has built-in support for Jekyll, I decided to use that. The code for this website is also public: github.com/wp-cli/wp-cli.github.com

Version 0.6

Got a lot of exciting news regarding wp-cliWP-CLI WP-CLI is the Command Line Interface for WordPress, used to do administrative and development tasks in a programmatic way. The project page is http://wp-cli.org/ https://make.wordpress.org/cli/, so let’s get right into it:

The Reach

Besides Dreamhost, it’s used and recommended by the WordPress.comWordPress.com An online implementation of WordPress code that lets you immediately access a new WordPress environment to publish your content. WordPress.com is a private company owned by Automattic that hosts the largest multisite in the world. This is arguably the best place to start blogging if you have never touched WordPress before. https://wordpress.com/ VIP team to all their clients.

Oh, and it’s also used in a Juju Charm for deploying WordPress in the cloud. 😀

The --require

An interesting but easily overlooked feature is the new --require global parameter. Say you wrote a custom command called chores for yourself:

WP_CLI::add_command( 'chores', 'My_Chores' );

class My_Chores extends WP_CLI_Command {

    function do_laundry() {
        ...
    }

    function wash_dishes() {
        ...
    }
}

Now, where do you put this code, so that WP-CLI can reach it? You could put it in a pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party., but if you have multiple WP installations, you’d have to install that plugin on each one. You could put it inside one of the WP-CLI directories, but that creates problems when you want to update. Here’s what you could do instead:

wp --require=/path/to/chores.php chores do_laundry

The --require parameter will load that PHPPHP PHP (recursive acronym for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor) is a widely-used open source general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for web development and can be embedded into HTML. https://www.php.net/manual/en/index.php file at just the right time for the command to work as you’d expect.

The Manual

The help system has been improved. When you do wp help core config, an actual man page will show up, with details about each parameter:

Unfortunately, this doesn’t work if you install WP-CLI via the PEAR package, because PEAR doesn’t know how to handle them. 🙁

The Changelog

Commands:

  • added wp post and wp post-meta
  • added wp user-meta
  • added wp blog create
  • added wp export
  • added wp theme install and wp theme update
  • added wp transient
  • added wp db optimize and wp db repair
  • added wp db create, wp db drop and wp db reset
  • added wp db import
  • added wp core install_network
  • added wp core update_db
  • added --json option to several subcommands
  • added --network option to wp plugin activate
  • fixed wp plugin update

Internals:

  • fixed “out of memory” error
  • misc bugfixes and optimizations

You can also browse the full list of resolved issues.

The Community

Most of the new commands you see in this release were actually implemented by other people.

Here are all the people that have contributed to this release: andreascreten, dwightjack, getsource, johnpbloch, joshstoik1, kidfiction, marcoceppi, mgburns, mwilliamson, roelven, scribu, soulou, tollmanz.

The Future

The first thing I want to tackle next is revamping the install process. I’m also thinking of ditching PEAR entirely; it’s just too limited: no man pages, no command auto-complete etc.

Beyond that, there are a lot of gaps to fill: wp import, wp blog update, wp attachment anyone?

Version 0.5

Version 0.5.0 is now available. See resolved issues.

Changelog

Commands:

  • added wp user
  • added wp core download
  • added wp core config
  • added wp plugin update --all

Internals:

  • added --url --path and --user global parameters
  • various bugfixes

Contributors to this release: andreascreten, ericandrewlewis, getsource, johnpbloch, scribu, spuriousdata, svaj, wopr42.

Version 0.4

Version 0.4.0 is now available. See resolved issues.

Changelog

  • added wp eval and wp eval-file
  • added wp export
  • added wp core install
  • fixed wp core update
  • added --dev flag to wp plugin install
  • added wp plugin uninstall
  • fixed wp plugin install and wp plugin update

Contributors to this release: mwilliamson, scribu, tott.

Version 0.3

Version 0.3.0 is now available.

Changelog

Commands:

  • added wp sql
  • improved wp option
  • improved wp plugin and wp theme
  • added wp generate
  • added wp core version

Internals:

  • added --version special parameter
  • added --blog global parameter
  • added bash completion script
  • added pear installer

Contributors to this release: andreascreten, conatus, matiskay, nb, scribu, toszcze.