Wp eval (WP-CLI)

wp eval executes arbitrary PHP code within or outside a website. This just might be one of the main reasons why I love working in Bash: There is such easy access to other environments, like PHP and SQL.

$ wp help eval

NAME

  wp eval

DESCRIPTION

  Executes arbitrary PHP code.

SYNOPSIS

  wp eval <php-code> [--skip-wordpress]

  Note: because code is executed within a method, global variables need
  to be explicitly globalized.

OPTIONS

  <php-code>
    The code to execute, as a string.

  [--skip-wordpress]
    Execute code without loading WordPress.

EXAMPLES

    # Display WordPress content directory.
    $ wp eval 'echo WP_CONTENT_DIR;'
    /var/www/wordpress/wp-content

    # Generate a random number.
    $ wp eval 'echo rand();' --skip-wordpress
    479620423

Example

#!/bin/bash
#
# Interact with ACF fields through PHP-API
#
###############################################################
# Go to example.com
###############################################################
#
cd /var/www/example.com


###############################################################
# Use the_field (ACF command)
###############################################################
#
php_string='the_field("hero_text",7);'

wp eval "$php_string"

Serialize & unserialize

AFAIK (2023.11), WP-CLI doesn't have its own commands for serializing and deserializing of serialzed database values. However, this might be fixed by accessing the PHP functions for this, through wp eval - Except that I don't get the data in a usefull format, I suspect.

Also, I haven't got it working yet (2023.11.27):

i_ser='a:1:{s:13:"administrator";b:1;}'

php_string="unserialize ('${i_ser}')"

echo ""
echo "### php_string:"
echo "$php_string"

wp eval "$php_string"

Output:

### php_string:
unserialize ('a:1:{s:13:"administrator";b:1;}')
Parse error: syntax error, unexpected end of file in phar:///opt/wp/vendor/wp-cli/eval-command/src/Eval_Command.php(37) : eval()'d code on line 1
Error: There has been a critical error on this website.Learn more about troubleshooting WordPress. There has been a critical error on this website.

See also

• Serialised data (WordPress)