{"id":1518,"date":"2017-10-30T09:00:57","date_gmt":"2017-10-30T00:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/n8finch2024.local\/?p=1518"},"modified":"2017-10-30T09:09:37","modified_gmt":"2017-10-30T00:09:37","slug":"wrote-first-bash-script-implement-wp-cli-managed-sites","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/n8finch2024.local\/wrote-first-bash-script-implement-wp-cli-managed-sites\/","title":{"rendered":"How I Wrote My First Bash Script to Implement WP-CLI on Managed Sites"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>They say if you want to learn something, teach.<\/p>\n<p>Or scratch your own itch.<\/p>\n<p>Or just do it.<\/p>\n<p>In any case, I had an itch that I have been wanting to find a fix for for a while.<\/p>\n<p>If you are a developer like me, you began figuring this &#8220;WordPress thing&#8221; out through tutorials, trial and (mostly) error, and trying a lot of different things out.<\/p>\n<p>Also, if you&#8217;re like me, you got into this for several reasons, one of which is the joy of helping people out and getting them a website setup and launched. I love the satisfaction of getting that project launched and the joy these folks have when they realize they can manage their own publishing.<\/p>\n<p>And of course, if you&#8217;re a developer like me, you have a shared hosting account with at least a dozen different websites that are small personal projects or folks on the &#8220;friends and family plan&#8221; (read &#8220;free hosting&#8221; \ud83d\ude42 ). This means I have a dozen or so sites I want to make sure I keep updated, but don&#8217;t want to spend a lot of time updating.<\/p>\n<p>So, I decided to learn enough bash to write a script that would execute WP-CLI commands on my local environment as well as my shared hosting.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s how I did it&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<h2>The Code<\/h2>\n<p>Here&#8217;s the <code>.sh<\/code>\u00a0file that I am currently using to update all my sites from the command line.<\/p>\n<p><script src=\"https:\/\/gist.github.com\/n8finch\/b9144cc07281383318342645bc9d54e9.js\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h2>What It Does<\/h2>\n<p>This code does a few things. Let&#8217;s read through it together&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>First, I double check that I actually want to run the command on line 4. The response to the <code>read<\/code>\u00a0prompt is stored in the <code>response<\/code>\u00a0variable.<\/p>\n<p>On line 6, I check that I want to run the command with an <code>if<\/code>\u00a0statement. Bash ends statements like this by reversing the lettering, which you can see on line 44: <code>fi<\/code>.<\/p>\n<p>Assuming we\u00a0<em>do<\/em> want to run the script, we want to loop through several directories. We store an array of these directories in the <code>DIRECTORIES<\/code>\u00a0variable on line 9.<\/p>\n<p>Then, we use a <code>for in; do<\/code>\u00a0loop to cycle through the directories one by one. Notice that the loop is ended on line 42 with <code>done<\/code>.<\/p>\n<p>In between, we execute several commands. First we change directories into the WordPress install&#8217;s root folder with <code>cd<\/code>, line 15.<\/p>\n<p>Once we&#8217;re in the root install directory, I notify what directory we&#8217;re in (lines 17 to 23), and begin executing WP-CLI commands, which have their own outputs (line 25-31).<\/p>\n<p>Once the WP-CLI commands are done, I notify that they directory we&#8217;re in is complete (lines 33-39), and change directories back out to the <code>www<\/code>\u00a0(for VVV) or <code>public_html<\/code>\u00a0(for shared hosting) directories on line 41.<\/p>\n<p>And this seems to work for me.<\/p>\n<h2>Just in Time Learning<\/h2>\n<p>While I am\u00a0<strong><em>very<\/em><\/strong> interested in learning more Bash, I knew I just wanted to learn just enough to get this job done. I knew I needed to know how to do two things:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Declare and assign variables<\/li>\n<li>Assign a variable an array (or object) for a list<\/li>\n<li>Loop through that array and perform wp-cli actions<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I googled my way to this online resource: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.learnshell.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>LearnShell.org<\/strong><\/a>. I was able to get through the tutorials fairly quickly to learn what I needed to with variables and loops.<\/p>\n<p>Then I found a WP-CLI presentation from <a href=\"https:\/\/shawnhooper.ca\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>Shawn Hooper<\/strong><\/a> on WordPress.tv\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/wordpress.tv\/2017\/04\/12\/shawn-hooper-wp-cli-save-time-by-managing-wordpress-from-the-command-line-3\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>here<\/strong><\/a>, and watching it reveled exactly what I was looking for. Towards the end of the presentation, Shawn uses a script he wrote to install and configure a new WordPress site<\/p>\n<p>I reached out to Shawn, and he sent over a link to his public gist. You can see Shawn&#8217;s public bash script <a href=\"https:\/\/gist.github.com\/shawnhooper\/19610614f197cffa4f387e9ce86fa2e6\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>here<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Armed with all this information, I was able to write a script that saves me about 30 minutes a month. More than that, I actually\u00a0<strong><em>want<\/em><\/strong> to use this script:-).<\/p>\n<h2>Room for Improvement<\/h2>\n<p>The most glaring area for improvement on this for me is the <code>cd<\/code>\u00a0logic. Currently, I&#8217;m changing this by hand, based on my environment (local or hosted). However, I could have the bash script check for all directories in an install (including the current root directory), and then use that to loop.<\/p>\n<p>Expanding on that further, if I have a directory that is not a WordPress install, I could automatically check to see if the directory contains a WordPress install, core files, or something similar. If it doesn&#8217;t, head back out of the directory and on to the next.<\/p>\n<p>This script could also be infinitely recursive, assuming I could have WordPress installs several directories deep with different file structures&#8230; But all that is for another day.<\/p>\n<p>The script as is works great for me, and I&#8217;m feeling good about it&#8230; for now ;-).<\/p>\n<p>Happy scripting!<\/p>\n<p><strong>Nate<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>They say if you want to learn something, teach. Or scratch your own itch. Or just do it. In any case, I had an itch that I have been wanting to find a fix for for a while. If you are a developer like me, you began figuring this &#8220;WordPress thing&#8221; out through tutorials, trial [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1527,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1,8],"tags":[43,42,39],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>How I Wrote My First Bash Script to Implement WP-CLI on Managed Sites | Nate Finch<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"So, I decided to learn enough to write a bash script that would execute WP-CLI commands on my local environment as well as my shared hosting.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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