👨‍🔧 Using environment constants when installing WordPress (a.k.a. How to not hardcode wp-config.php)

I recently created project Install WordPress through Composer and WP-CLI which fully installs WordPress through a script, without having to manually edit file wp-config.php to enter the database configuration and other variables during the installation process (more info on this on my previous blog post). This is achieved through WP-CLI, a tool which provides commands to interact with WordPress directly from the command line (or through a script), allowing us to not have to log into the wp-admin anymore. It is so convenient!

What the script does is to take the required configuration values from environment variables (which must be set in advance) and then, dynamically, create file wp-config.php. Hence, we can install the project directly from our repository, and a unique repo can serve all of our environments (DEV, STAGING, PROD). Preferably, our repos must never contain environment information! This is one of the fundamental practices of the Twelve Factor App, which defines guidelines to make application deployments simpler, faster and more scalable.

To dynamically save the environment variable values in file wp-config.php the script uses the following WP-CLI command:

wp config set {constant_name} {constant_value}

Then, to fill in the database information, the user is required to set the following environment variables:

$ export DB_NAME={SITE_DB_NAME}
$ export DB_USER={SITE_DB_USER}
$ export DB_PASSWORD={SITE_DB_PASSWORD}
$ export DB_HOST={SITE_DB_HOST}

To add these values to file wp-config.php, the script executes:

wp config set DB_NAME $DB_NAME
wp config set DB_USER $DB_USER
wp config set DB_PASSWORD $DB_PASSWORD 
if [ -n "$DB_HOST" ]
then
    wp config set DB_HOST $DB_HOST
fi

The host information is optional, because by default it is set as "localhost" which is an acceptable value. Hence, the script must check if environment variable $DB_HOST was set or not. It does this through a bash script conditional, if [ -n "$DB_HOST" ] then ... fi, which means: if variable $DB_HOST is not empty, then execute the instructions between then and fi.

All other environment variables are mandatory, so the script must also validate that they have been set. It does this through the following bash script commands:

#!/bin/bash

# Flag to know if there are errors
ERROR_ENV_VARS=""

# Required for wp-config.php
if [ -z "$DB_NAME" ]
then
    ERROR_ENV_VARS="$ERROR_ENV_VARS\nDB_NAME"
fi
if [ -z "$DB_USER" ]
then
    ERROR_ENV_VARS="$ERROR_ENV_VARS\nDB_USER"
fi
if [ -z "$DB_PASSWORD" ]
then
    ERROR_ENV_VARS="$ERROR_ENV_VARS\nDB_PASSWORD"
fi

# If there are errors, return an error state
if [ -n "$ERROR_ENV_VARS" ]
then
    echo "Fatal error: The following environment variable(s) cannot be empty: $ERROR_ENV_VARS"
    echo "Terminating process."
    exit 1
fi

Notice the exit 1 at the end of the script? Through that command, the script is interrupted (after displaying an error on the console) and it doesn't proceed to install WordPress.

To set the SALT keys we can also define environment constant for each of them, or ask WP-CLI to create and assign random values:

wp config shuffle-salts

And that's it! With a few bash script commands we are able to automate the whole WordPress installation process. Now, after the user enters the environment information, all that is needed is to execute:

$ composer create-project leoloso/wp-install

And voilà! A new WordPress site will be happily installed!