Wp-CLI not working with WordPress installed with composer

Question

I've installed a version of Wordpress using composer, and modified the default folders for the content (/wp-content) and the core (/wp).

My wp-config.php gets its DB_NAME, DB_USERNAME, DB_PASSWORD from environment variables defined in the .htaccess file.

I am able to connect to my wordpress instance using my browser, so the connection information in there is fine.

I have not managed to get wp-cli to run on this instance. wp-cli --debug outputs:

Debug (bootstrap): No readable global config found (0.014s)
Debug (bootstrap): No project config found (0.016s)
Debug (bootstrap): No package autoload found to load. (0.261s)
Debug (bootstrap): ABSPATH defined: /path/to/core/ (0.272s)
Debug (bootstrap): Begin WordPress load (0.288s)
Debug (bootstrap): wp-config.php path: /path/to/wp-config.php (0.292s)
Error: Error establishing a database connection

(I've double checked these paths and they are correct)

I keep getting that same error. I've tried installing a clean instance using composer, but this time :

• without any plugin
• without any theme
• by defining the DB_NAME, DB_USERNAME, DB_PASSWORD directly in the wp-config.php file rather than getting those from env. variables.
• but I kept the custom folder structure /wp for the core and /wp-content for the content

Still the same error... Am I missing something ? Is it the custom folder structure that wp-cli doesn't like ?

Executing wp-cli --info outputs this :
PHP binary: /usr/bin/php
PHP version:    5.5.36
php.ini used:
WP-CLI root dir:    phar://wp-cli.phar
WP-CLI packages dir:
WP-CLI global config:
WP-CLI project config:
WP-CLI version: 0.24.1

I'm on Max OS X El Capitan.

Thanks a lot for your help,

Julien

Answer 1

If you are calling WP-CLI from the parent directory you need to tell it where core is using --path

$ wp --path=path/to/core

Some more details here: http://wp-cli.org/config/

You can set also set this with a config file wp-cli.yml that contains

path: path/to/core

Details: http://wp-cli.org/config/#config-files

Answer 2

An old thread, I know but I recently has this problem. I had prepended the path to composer's wp to the PATH env var and the following produced the expected output:

% wp --info
OS: Darwin 21.6.0 Darwin Kernel Version 21.6.0: Mon Jun 24 00:56:10 PDT 2024; root:xnu-8020.240.18.709.2~1/RELEASE_X86_64 x86_64
Shell:  /bin/zsh
PHP binary: /usr/local/bin/php
PHP version:    8.3.11
php.ini used:   /usr/local/etc/php/8.3/php.ini
MySQL binary:   /usr/local/bin/mysql
MySQL version:  mysql  Ver 9.0.1 for macos12.7 on x86_64 (Homebrew)
SQL modes:  
WP-CLI root dir:    /usr/local/var/www/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/wp-simple-google-appointments/vendor/wp-cli/wp-cli
WP-CLI vendor dir:  /usr/local/var/www/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/wp-simple-google-appointments/vendor
WP_CLI phar path:   
WP-CLI packages dir:    
WP-CLI cache dir:   /Users/XxXxXxX/.wp-cli/cache
WP-CLI global config:   
WP-CLI project config:  
WP-CLI version: 2.11.0

But everything else exited with no output and with exit code zero. The --debug flag did not show any errors.

This was because I was missing the following (from the require-dev section) in my composer.json:

        "wp-cli/db-command" : "^2",
        "wp-cli/entity-command" : "^2",
        "wp-cli/extension-command" : "^2",
        "wp-cli/package-command" : "^2"

By default, wp-cli/wp-cli just installs the WPCLI container without any WPCLI commands installed!

EDIT: Or require wp-cli/wp-cli-bundle for a selection of most WPCLI commands.