13

I have a PHP script that I need to run as a cron job. However this script needs access to the WP API (get_pages(), get_post_meta() and get_permalink() specifically). I've followed the instructions at http://codex.wordpress.org/Integrating_WordPress_with_Your_Website, but to no avail.

Code:

require_once('../../../wp-blog-header.php');
$args = array(
    'child_of' => 2083
);
$pages = get_pages($args);

However when I run php -q this_file.php from the command-line I get the following output:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" >
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
    <title>Database Error</title>

</head>
<body>
    <h1>Error establishing a database connection</h1>
</body>
</html>

Anyone have any thoughts/suggestions?

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4 Answers 4

Reset to default
17

WordPress expects the $_SERVER variables to be setup as if it were a normal web request. Also, I would suggest loading wp-load.php instead of wp-blog-header.php since you probably don't need the WP class or the template loader to run. Here is how I normally start any scripts I need to interact with WP from command line:

define('DOING_AJAX', true);
define('WP_USE_THEMES', false);
$_SERVER = array(
    "HTTP_HOST" => "mysite.com",
    "SERVER_NAME" => "mysite.com",
    "REQUEST_URI" => "/",
    "REQUEST_METHOD" => "GET"
);
require_once('current/wp-load.php');

Update 2018:

Nowadays Wordpress doesn't require $_SERVER at all. If you simply need to access Wordpress API functions (e.g. to read/write to the database), all you need is:

require_once('current/wp-load.php');

# your code goes here...
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7
  • To use get_pages, he does need the WP class. so wp-blog-header.php was the right file to call.
    – goldenapples
    Commented Dec 14, 2010 at 16:49
  • Tried doing exactly as you've specified here with the correct HTTP_HOST, SERVER_NAME and REQUEST_URI. Also tried with both wp-blog-header.php and wp-load.php. Same error message as stated in original question in all instances. I'm running this from my theme directory - does that matter?
    – ggutenberg
    Commented Dec 14, 2010 at 17:23
  • @goldenapples, he needs it to load, but he doesn't need it to run, which is the extra stuff that wp-blog-header.php does.
    – prettyboymp
    Commented Dec 14, 2010 at 18:14
  • 2
    @dosboy, are you running this on a server or a development computer running mamp? If you're running it on a computer that has more than one instance of mysql installed, there is a chance that your environment may be using a different php and mysql instance from the command line than it does with normal http requests.
    – prettyboymp
    Commented Dec 14, 2010 at 18:18
  • Hmm... clever thinking. It is a dev box running MAMP. But I don't have SSH access to my production box. Any idea how to specify a MySQL instance on my dev machine just to make sure the script is working?
    – ggutenberg
    Commented Dec 14, 2010 at 18:34
5

You can use the WP-CLI eval-file command:

@daily /usr/bin/wp --path=/path/to/wp/ eval-file /path/to/that_file.php

This will first load the WP environment, then run your file.

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1

The accepted answer by @prettyboymp is about the most helpful and unique information about accessing wordpress from a php script that I have found on the web. It worked perfectly for me with WP core 3.7.1, then 3.9 broke it.

The problem was that wp-load.php changed the way it tested the REQUEST_URI for a valid path. But fortunately it also added a new filter to allow short-circuiting the test.

So to restore the functionality of the answer in 3.9, I added define('SUNRISE', 'on'); to wp-config.php, and created file wp-content/sunrise.php with this content:

add_filter('pre_get_site_by_path', 'my_pre_get_site_by_path', 10, 5 /*null, $domain, $path, $segments, $paths*/ );
    function my_pre_get_site_by_path($input, $domain, $path, $segments, $paths) {
    if ($path == '/') {
        return get_blog_details(array('domain' => $domain, 'path' => PATH_CURRENT_SITE), false);
    }
    return $input;
}
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0

A variation to @prettyboymp's answer could be:

if(in_array(php_sapi_name(), ['cli', 'cli-server'])) {
    foreach($_SERVER as $key => $val) {
        if(!getenv($key))
             putenv($key.'='.$val);
    }

    if(!getenv('HTTP_HOST'))
        putenv('HTTP_HOST='.gethostname());

    if(!getenv('SERVER_ADDR'))
        putenv('SERVER_ADDR='.gethostbyname(gethostname()));

    if(!getenv('REQUEST_URI'))
        putenv('REQUEST_URI=/');

    if(!getenv('REQUEST_METHOD'))
        putenv('REQUEST_METHOD=GET');
}
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