Working with WP-CLI

Simply Static Pro now has a pretty extensive integration with WP-CLI.

We will cover the basics of using Simply Static with this command line tool as we added a lot of interactivity and help right into the CLI integration.

Getting started

As you may already know, you can interact with WP CLI by typing “wp + command” into the terminal of your WordPress installation directory. We won’t cover the basics of WP-CLI, so if you want to learn about it, follow the official documentation here.

All commands of the integration are prefixed with “simply-static”. So just type “wp simply-static” to get an overview:

wp simply-static

Run an export with WP-CLI

To run an export with WP-CLI, we implemented the “run” command:

wp simply-static run

By default, it will start a full static export. However, you can use some optional arguments to run single or build exports.

Single Export:

wp simply-static run --single=123

123 is the post ID you want to run a static export for.

Build Exports:

The same pattern is used for build exports. You can use the build id to trigger a specific one:

wp simply-static run --build=123

Include/Exclude files and pages

You can also exclude or include files and pages from the export within the CLI integration. We show you how to include files as both commands work similarly:

wp simply-static includes

Once you hit enter, you will get additional commands to include files and a list of optional arguments.

wp simply-static includes add_file <path> [--blog_id=<blog_id>]
   or: wp simply-static includes add_url <url> [--blog_id=<blog_id>]
   or: wp simply-static includes list_files [--blog_id=<blog_id>]
   or: wp simply-static includes list_urls [--blog_id=<blog_id>]
   or: wp simply-static includes remove_file <path> [--blog_id=<blog_id>]
   or: wp simply-static includes remove_url <url> [--blog_id=<blog_id>]

You can optionally set the blog_id argument if you run a multisite environment and you only want to handle these settings for a specific subsite.

We use the add_url command now to dig a bit deeper into what is expected. As you may have already thought, you need to provide the URL of the page you want to include. Always make sure to use an absolute URL, not just a path.

wp simply-static includes add_url <url> 

The other commands work in a similar way. For completion, here is the overview of the commands when excluding files:

 wp simply-static excludes
 usage: wp simply-static excludes add_url <url> [--do_not_follow=<do_not_follow>] [--do_not_save=<do_not_save>] [--blog_id=<blog_id>]
   or: wp simply-static excludes list_urls [--blog_id=<blog_id>]
   or: wp simply-static excludes remove_url <url> [--blog_id=<blog_id>]
   or: wp simply-static excludes update_url <url> [--do_not_follow=<do_not_follow>] [--do_not_save=<do_not_save>] [--blog_id=<blog_id>]

Updating Forms

You can add new form integrations from the CLI pretty easily with:

wp simply-static forms
   usage: wp simply-static forms add_form [--blog_id=<blog_id>]
   or: wp simply-static forms list [--blog_id=<blog_id>]

If you use the add_form command, you must add all required parameters to add a new form connection. As there are quite a lot of fields that need to be filled out, we made it interactive and added a little prompt base approach to the CLI integration:

wp simply-static forms add_form
Title My Form
Choose a Tool:
 - cf7 : Contact Form 7
 - gravity_forms : Gravity Forms
 - external : External Service
Tool: cf7
Form ID (Required if using Form plugin) 12
Subject (Only required when using a form plugin.) My subject
Name (Add a comma-separated list of the name attributes of your form.) myfield-1,myfield-2
Message (Use HTML) This is the body content
E-mail (where the e-mail should be sent to.) support@simplystatic.com
Success: Form Created.

Updating options

You can also update options in Simply Static via CLI now by using the “update” command:

 wp simply-static update
   usage: wp simply-static update deployment <command>
   or: wp simply-static update general <command>

As you can see, right now, we only provide this command for deployment and general options as some of the more advanced options, like forms and search, have some interactivity (like Ajax requests) attached to it. We will extend the commands for that in the future.