WordPress Archives - Rolly G. Bueno Jr.

What is WP CLI?

As part of my experience working on WordPress since 2009, which counts as more than 14 years, one of the working tools I would recommend to new WordPress developers is WP CLI.

So what is WP CLI? It’s a command line interface that allows developer to manage their WordPress sites using command prompt, if you are using Windows or Terminal if you are using Linux.

One of the commands that is useful(to me at least) is when I clean up thousands of spam comments without using bulk action, which is limited to 25 posts deletion per request. Not to mention that would be time-consuming. A single WP CLI command will do this once in under 1-3 seconds.

$ wp comment delete $(wp comment list --status=spam --format=ids)

How to install WP CLI?

While I recommend developers use Linux-based operating systems for their workstations, some of us still find Windows as our main operating system. This tutorial will walk you through installing WP CLI on Windows.

The first thing I would recommend is that we avoid using Windows default command prompt and instead use git-scm. Download and install https://git-scm.com/download/win first. We will use this command interface for the rest of our work.

Second, we need to install Composer. Download Composer-Setup.exe which will give you the latest Composer version, then we need to setup Composer in our Windows PATH. This will let you use composer command from any directory. Verify if your composer installed properly by using using the following command:

$ cd C:/
$ C:/ composer -V

Once you’re done, create a new directory in C:/, depending on what drive letter your Windows is using. It should be using C:/ as default but double-check your local install. Download https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wp-cli/builds/gh-pages/phar/wp-cli.phar and save it in our new directory. Now using Visual Editor IDE or anything you are comfortable with, create a new batch file and name it wp.bat for our alias.

Save the following code on your wp.bat file:

@ECHO OFF
php "%~dp0wp-cli.phar" %*

Set the variable Path in your local environment. Go over to System Properties -> Advanced System Properties -> Advanced. Click on the Environment Variables under the System Variables and find the variable name Path. Add ;C:\WP-CLI and click save. Restart the bash interface you are using at the moment and type wp cli version.

If you can see WP-CLI 2.x.x, then it means you have successfully installed WP CLI.

Happy coding!

WordPress has a set of coding standards that you can use when you develop either plugins or themes. While it’s not mandatory, I highly recommend using it on your project. It will make your code more user friendly and relatively easy to maintain in the long run.

I was a Windows user for a long time and recently switched to Ubuntu 20. When I tried to install WordPress Coding Standards, I struggled a few times since I’m new to the Linux OS. In this tutorial, I will show you step by step on how I did it on my end and hoping that this will help you out.

First requirement: composer. I’m using this throughout my installation. You can check their documentation on how you install it in your system.

Installation steps:

Install PHP_CodeSniffer – This is the script that is responsible for tokenization of the PHP, CSS and Javascript code on your project that detects any code violation from the defined standard. By using a terminal in Linux, cd to your home directory and install PHP_CodeSniffer.

$ cd ~/
$ composer global require "squizlabs/php_codesniffer=*"

Download WordPress Coding Standard – In my case, I would prefer to install this globally instead of per project. Make sure that you are still in your home directory in your terminal before starting. Executing the code below will clone the repository and rename it wpcs.

$ git clone -b master https://github.com/WordPress/WordPress-Coding-Standards.git wpcs

After you have downloaded the WordPress Coding Standard, we need to set this on your local path. Now this is the part where I have struggled before so make sure you follow exactly to avoid the mistakes I’ve made.

$ sudo phpcs --config-set installed_paths /home/username/wpcs

Noticed the username? That would be the username of your current account. You should see this path when you go to Files -> Home, then press CTRL + L. You can verify if you have working sniffers by using phpcs -i.

After you have confirmed that WordPress Coding Standard is added to your setup, we can now install the extensions we need for the Visual Studio Code. There are tons of similar extensions that are currently available, but these are the extensions that I am using and proven to be working.

Phpcbf by Per Soderlind and phpcs by Ioannis Kappas

Installations of these extensions are pretty much straightforward. Once you have done that, we are going to configure the settings. I would personally recommend that we set this up globally instead of per workspace. This will save you repetitive configuration, however if you prefer per workspace setup, you can copy the same settings from below as well.

Restart your Visual Code Editor, then go to File -> Preferences -> Settings -> Extensions -> PHP CodeSniffer configuration. Scroll down a bit until you see Edit in settings.json as shown below.

Click that link and add the following:

{
   "phpcs.enable": true,
   "phpcs.executablePath": "/path/to/phpcs",
   "phpcs.standard": "WordPress",
   "phpcbf.enable": true,
   "phpcbf.documentFormattingProvider": true,
   "phpcbf.onsave": true,
   "phpcbf.executablePath": "/path/to/phpcbf",
   "phpcbf.standard": "WordPress",
   "phpcs.showSources": true,
}

Now, open a terminal then go to your home directory then we need to determine the paths for phpcbf and phpcf that we need for the configuration.

$ cd ~/
$ which phpcs
$ which phpcbf

Copy the path of both tools and put them on the executablePath value respectively. Save and restart your Visual Code Editor. By this moment, you should be able to have the tools working. Open a sample PHP file and add your code, then when you click CTRL + S, it will sniff your code by default and phpcbf will auto format your code.

Let me know in the comment section if you find this tutorial useful or if you have any questions.

Happy coding!