Watch the introduction screencast (4 minutes)

What does this mean for me?

• Less need to copy the database. If you make changes, Push your bundle to the filesystem. To load changes, Pull the bundle into your database.
• No need to manually apply database settings changes. No more “fire drills” where you’re rushing to figure out which settings you forgot to change.
• Track and migrate configuration files using git, subversion, etc.

Using WP-CFM

To get you started with the plugin, we’re providing the basics below. This is a big issue-space for WP, and we’re excited to get the communities feedback on the issue queue too. So please jump in on GitHub – https://github.com/forumone/wp-cfm

Terminology

• Bundle: A group of settings to track. This could be a single setting, or all the site’s available settings.
• Push: Export configuration from your database to the filesystem.
• Pull: Import configuration from the filesystem into your database.

Adding custom configuration items

The wpcfm_configuration_items hook lets you register custom configuration items.

function my_configuration_items( $items ) {
  $items['cfs_field_groups'] = array(
    'value' => 'MY CONFIGURATION DATA',
    'group' => 'WP Options', // optional
    'callback' => 'my_pull_handler', // optional
  );
  return $items;
}
add_filter( 'wpcfm_configuration_items', 'my_configuration_items' );

This filter contains an associative array of all configuration options. Each option has a unique key, and supports several parameters:

• value: (required) The configuration data to store.
• group: (optional) A group name, allowing multiple configuration options to be grouped together. This is only used in the admin UI. Default = “WP Options”
• callback: (optional) If the configuration data is not stored within wp_options, then WP-CFM needs to know how to Pull it into the database. This parameter accepts a (string) function name or (array) method. A $params array is passed into the callback function (see below).

Configuration outside of wp_options

WP-CFM automatically handles configuration within the wp_options table. If your plugin stores settings elsewhere, then use the above callback parameter to tell WP-CFM how to properly import (Pull) configuration into the database.

/**
* $params['name']          The option name
* $params['group']         The option group
* $params['old_value']     The current DB value that will get overwritten
* $params['new_value']     The new DB value
*/
function my_pull_handler( $params ) {
// Save something
}

Using the Command Line, WP-CFM with WP-CLI

WP-CFM supports pulling / pushing bundles from the command-line using WP-CLI:

wp config pull <bundle_name>
wp config push <bundle_name>

You can optionally set bundle_name to “all” to push / pull all bundles at once.

Summary

Configuration Management has been a pain-point in WordPress development for a long time. Having to manually deploy database configuration is an error-prone and time consuming process. We are happy to release WP-CFM to the WordPress community because we think it fills a much-needed void. We’re excited to release this free plugin, and we hope that it improves your deployment process!