The recommended way to install WP-CLI is by downloading the Phar build (archives similar to Java JAR files, see this article for more detail), marking it executable, and placing it on your PATH.
First, download wp-cli.phar using wget or curl. For example:
curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wp-cli/builds/gh-pages/phar/wp-cli.phar
Then, check if it works:
php wp-cli.phar --info
To be able to type just wp, instead of php wp-cli.phar, you need to make the file executable and move it to somewhere in your PATH. For example:
chmod +x wp-cli.phar
sudo mv wp-cli.phar /usr/local/bin/wp
Now try running wp --info. If WP-CLI is installed successfully, you'll see output like this:
OS: Linux 4.10.0-42-generic #46~16.04.1-Ubuntu SMP Mon Dec 4 15:57:59 UTC 2017 x86_64
Shell: /usr/bin/zsh
PHP binary: /usr/bin/php
PHP version: 7.1.12-1+ubuntu16.04.1+deb.sury.org+1
php.ini used: /etc/php/7.1/cli/php.ini
WP-CLI root dir: /home/wp-cli/.wp-cli
WP-CLI packages dir: /home/wp-cli/.wp-cli/packages/
WP-CLI global config: /home/wp-cli/.wp-cli/config.yml
WP-CLI project config:
WP-CLI version: 1.5.0
Voila! You're now an official WP-CLI user.
Wondering what to do next? Check out the quick start guide for a short introduction and some example usage.
If you have installed WP-CLI using the recommended Phar method, you can update it at any time by running wp cli update (although if WP-CLI is owned by root, that may be sudo wp cli update). If you installed WP-CLI using the Composer or Git-based installations, see the specific instructions for updating associated with each method below.
When you run wp cli update, you'll be prompted to confirm that you wish to update with a message similar to the following:
You have version 0.21.1. Would you like to update to 0.23.1? [y/n]
After you accept, you should see a success message:
Success: Updated WP-CLI to 0.23.1
If you're already running the latest version of WP-CLI, you'll see this message:
WP-CLI is at the latest version.
Want to live life on the edge? Run wp cli update --nightly to use the latest nightly build of WP-CLI. The nightly build is more or less stable enough for you to use in your local environment, and always includes the latest and greatest.
For more information about wp cli update, including flags and options that can be used, read the full docs page on the update command.
WP-CLI also comes with a tab completion script for Bash and Z-Shell. Just download wp-completion.bash and source it from ~/.bash_profile:
source /FULL/PATH/TO/wp-completion.bash
To have this change take effect in your currently active shell, run source ~/.bash_profile afterwards.
If you're using the Oh My Zsh framework, you can enable the built-in wp-cli plugin, by adding it to the plugins=(wp-cli git [...]) line in your ~/.zshrc file.
Note: the Oh My Zsh plugin comes with the bash completion script included, so it's unnecessary to have both.
To have this change take effect in your currently active shell, run source ~/.zshrc afterwards.
If you're using Dash and Alfred, you can add a custom Alfred workflow to look up WP-CLI command information.
Open Dash and download the WP-CLI docset: Dash › Preferences › Downloads › User Contributions › Search for WP-CLI
Still in Dash, activate the Alfred integration: Dash › Preferences › Integration › Alfred
Open Alfred and try searching for a specific command. For example, this gives you an overview of the plugin command and its subcommands: wp-cli plugin
If you intend to work on WP-CLI itself, see the Setting up section in Pull Requests.
The "nightly" is the bleeding-edge version of WP-CLI, built straight from the master branch.
Just follow the normal installation instructions, except change the URL to the phar file:
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wp-cli/builds/gh-pages/phar/wp-cli-nightly.phar
As part of a project
Add the following line to your projects composer.json file:
"require" : {
"wp-cli/wp-cli-bundle": "*"
}
To add any additional suggested packages seen in the wp-cli-bundle package, such as psy/psysh, run:
composer require --dev $(composer suggests --by-package | awk '/wp-cli\/wp-cli-bundle/' RS= | grep -o -P '(?<=- ).*(?=:)')
Optionally (if run on a server or for e.g. in a virtual machine locally) you can automate setting up the command and making it available in the users path. Let's assume Composer installed into /var/www/vendor (you can get the composer vendor-dir config variable specific to your machine via composer config --list | grep "\[vendor-dir\]"), we can add the following scripts/commands to the composer.json file. The second and third line set up bash completion so we don't have to remember every single command:
"scripts" : {
"post-install-cmd" : [
"[[ -f /usr/bin/wp ]] || sudo ln -s /var/www/vendor/wp-cli/wp-cli/bin/wp /usr/bin/wp",
"source /var/www/vendor/wp-cli/wp-cli/utils/wp-completion.bash",
"[[ -f ~/.bash_profile ]] || touch ~/.bash_profile",
"source ~/.bash_profile"
]
}
Above script assumes that your current shell is bash, which might not be the case for all users. Example for a vagrant box (added to the scripts-block):
cat /etc/passwd | grep $(whoami)
vagrant:x:1000:1000::/home/vagrant:/bin/bash
In case you got bash available and installed for your OS, you can switch dynamically:
"scripts" : {
"post-update-cmd" : [
"/bin/bash -c \"[[ -f /usr/local/bin/wp ]] || sudo ln -s /var/www/vendor/wp-cli/wp-cli/bin/wp /usr/bin/wp\"",
"/bin/bash -c \"source /var/www/vendor/wp-cli/wp-cli/utils/wp-completion.bash\"",
"/bin/bash -c \"[[ -f ~/.bash_profile ]] || touch ~/.bash_profile\"",
"/bin/bash -c \"source ~/.bash_profile\""
]
}
As a project
Needs php and composer (or php composer.phar) set up as console commands.
composer create-project wp-cli/wp-cli-bundle --prefer-source
Then run wp-cli-bundle/vendor/wp-cli/wp-cli/bin/wp or add wp-cli-bundle/vendor/wp-cli/wp-cli/bin folder to PATH for global wp command (on Windows, use wp-cli/bin/wp.bat instead).
To update, you'll need to:
cd wp-cli-bundle
git pull origin master
composer install
Global require
If you prefer to have PHP tools installed globally via Composer and have something like ~/.composer/vendor/bin in your PATH (or C:\Users\you\AppData\Roaming\Composer\vendor\bin on Windows), you can just run:
composer global require wp-cli/wp-cli-bundle
To update everything globally, run composer global update.
Installing a specific version
If you want to install a specific version of WP-CLI then append the version numbers behind the packages
composer create-project wp-cli/wp-cli-bundle:2.1.0 --no-dev
The version must be in a format that Composer can understand and can be found on packagist.org.
Installing bleeding-edge
If you want to install bleeding-edge then use dev-master:
composer create-project wp-cli/wp-cli-bundle:dev-master --no-dev
You can specify a custom install path for WP-CLI, like so:
composer create-project wp-cli/wp-cli-bundle /usr/share/wp-cli --no-dev
Then, just symlink the binary:
sudo ln -s /usr/share/wp-cli-bundle/vendor/wp-cli/wp-cli/bin /usr/bin/wp
brew install wp-cli
Here's the formula.
The Docker community maintains WordPress and WP-CLI images.
To include the WP-CLI image in your own project:
image: wordpress:cli
Install via composer as described above or use the following method.
Make sure you have php installed and in your path so you can execute it globally.
Download wp-cli.phar manually and save it to a folder, for example c:\wp-cli
Create a file named wp.bat in c:\wp-cli with the following contents:
@ECHO OFF
php "c:/wp-cli/wp-cli.phar" %*
Add c:\wp-cli to your path:
setx path "%path%;c:\wp-cli"
You can now use WP-CLI from anywhere in Windows command line.
On Debian or Ubuntu, just download and open one of the .deb packages: https://github.com/wp-cli/builds/tree/gh-pages/deb
su -c 'dnf install wp-cli'
su -c 'yum install wp-cli'
In some cases, like for MAMP installs, you might not want to use the default PHP binary.
To use the latest PHP version provided by MAMP, you'll need to modify your PATH environment variable with the following added to your ~/.bash_profile or ~/.zsh_profile:
PHP_VERSION=$(ls /Applications/MAMP/bin/php/ | sort -n | tail -1)
export PATH=/Applications/MAMP/bin/php/${PHP_VERSION}/bin:$PATH
To use a specific PHP version provided by MAMP, you'll need to determine the path to the PHP version's executable, and modify your PATH environment variable with the following added to your ~/.bash_profile or ~/.zsh_profile:
export PATH=/Applications/MAMP/bin/php/php5.5.26/bin:$PATH
Note there's no assignment of the PHP_VERSION variable in this case, because we aren't dynamically looking up the latest PHP version.
Once you have added that and saved the file, reload the file with:
source ~/.bash_profile
After you've done that, run wp --info to make sure the change has been applied correctly.
For Composer and Git-based WP-CLI installation, you can alternatively set the WP_CLI_PHP environment variable, if you don't want to modify PATH for some reason.
See http://razorfrog.com/installing-wp-cli-on-mediatemple-grid-server/