wp-local-docker

WP Local Docker

Usage no npm install needed!

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README

WP Local Docker

WP Local Docker is an easy to use Docker based local development environment for WordPress development that works on Mac, Windows, and Linux.

Support Level Release Version MIT License

Documentation

Introduction

WP Local Docker is an easy to use Docker based local development environment for WordPress development that works on Mac, Windows, and Linux. Any number of environments can be created and may run at the same time1, and requests will be routed appropriately to the correct environment based on the hostname specified during environment creation.

Each environment within WP Local Docker is powered by nginx, phpfpm, memcached, and if desired, elasticsearch. PHP versions 5.6, 7.0, 7.1, 7.2 or 7.3 are all supported. Supporting all environments within WP Local Docker is a MySQL container to run all MySQL databases, WP Snapshots to easily push and pull snapshots of a WordPress installation, PHPMyAdmin to manage MySQL databases with a familiar UI, and mailcatcher to catch any mail sent from all environments.

In addition to the services required to run WordPress, WP Local Docker will also download and install WordPress as a single site installation, a Multisite with Subdirectories, a Multisite with Subdomains, or the core development version.

Prerequisites

WP Local Docker requires docker, docker-compose, Node, and npm. It is recommended that you use the latest versions of docker and docker-compose. Node 12 is the minimum version of node that is currently supported. While WP Local Docker may work with other versions of Node, compatibility is not guaranteed. We recommend using NVM to manage Node versions.

MacOS

Docker Desktop is available for download from the Docker website and will install docker-compose automatically. NodeJS and npm can be installed from the NodeJS website, via a package manager, such as Homebrew, or using a version manager, such as nvm.

NodeJS EACCESS Error

If Node was installed via the download from the NodeJS website, you will likely get an EACCESS error when trying to install global npm packages without using sudo. Npm has an article on preventing permission errors if you'd like to run the command without sudo. Alternatively, just run the install command with sudo.

Windows

Docker Desktop is available for download from the Docker website and will install docker-compose automatically. NodeJS and npm can be installed from the NodeJS website. You may also need Python 3.7+ and Visual Studio 2015 or newer with the “Desktop development with C++” workload.

It is recommended that you use the WSL/2 backend for Docker. You should use (nvm to install Node inside of your default Linux distro. Once you have, you can install WP Local Docker, from inside of Linux, following the installation instructions.

It is helpful to share git credentials between Windows and WSL/2. To do so, run the following, from inside of your default Linux, making sure to change USER-NAME to your Windows username:

git config --global credential.helper "/mnt/c/Program\ Files/Git/mingw64/libexec/git-core/git-credential-manager.exe"
cd ~/.ssh
cp /mnt/c/Users/USER-NAME/.ssh/id_rsa* .

Linux

Docker has platform specific installation instructions available for linux on their documentation site. Once docker is installed, you will need to manually install docker compose. NodeJS can be installed via a package manager for many linux platforms following these instructions.

Installation

Once all installation prerequisites have been met, WP Local Docker is installed as a global npm package by running npm install -g wp-local-docker. You can confirm it has been installed by running 10updocker --version.

Configuration

The first time you run a WP Local Docker command, default configuration settings will be used if you have not manually configured WP Local Docker beforehand. By default, WP Local Docker will store all environments within the ~/wp-local-docker-sites directory and try to manage your hosts file when creating and deleting environments. If you would like to customize the environment path or opt to not have WP Local Docker update your hosts file, run 10updocker configure and follow the prompts.

Updating

To update WP Local Docker, run npm install -g wp-local-docker again and NPM will install the latest version over your current one.

Using WP Local Docker

Create an Environment

10updocker create will present you with a series of prompts to configure your environment to suit your needs.

It is recommended that you use the .test top level domain (TLD) for your local environments, as this TLD is reserved for the testing of software and is not intended to ever be installed into the global Domain Name System. Additionally, WP Local Docker is configured to send any container to container traffic for .test TLDs directly to the gateway container, so that things like WP Cron and the REST API can work between environments out of the box.

Migrate a WP Local Docker V1 Environment

10updocker migrate <OLD_PATH> [NEW_ENV] will migrate an old standalone WP Local Docker environment into a new WP Local Docker V2 environment. Before running this command, create a new environment using the 10updocker create command.

OLD_PATH should be the path to the root of your old WP Local Docker environment.

NEW_ENV should specify what environment to import into. If omitted, you will be prompted to select from available environments

Example:

  • 10updocker migrate ~/sites/mysite

Migrate a WP Local Docker V2 Environment to v3

10updocker configure to update to the latest .wplocaldocker/global/docker-compose.yml and answer yes to Do you want to reset your global services configuration? This will reset any customizations you have made.

M1 Architecture consideration

To utilize the new M1 architecture optimised docker images on existing sites, edit the docker-compose.yml file to match a newly created on. Alternatively you can just create new sites and they will be optimised for M1 archtecture.

Delete an Environment

10updocker delete <hostname> will delete an environment with the given hostname. Any local files, docker volumes, and databases related to the environment will be deleted permanently.

A special hostname all is available that will delete all environments. You will be asked to confirm deletion of each environment.

Stop an Environment

10updocker stop <hostname> will stop an environment from running while retaining all files, docker volumes, and databases related to the environment.

A special hostname all is available that will stop all running environments as well as the global services.

Start an Environment

10updocker start <hostname> will start a preexisting environment.

A special hostname all is available that will start all environments as well as the global services.

Restart an Environment

10updocker restart <hostname> will restart all services associated with a preexisting environment.

A special hostname all is available that will restart all environments as well as the global services.

Upgrade an Environment

10updocker upgrade <hostname> will upgrade all services associated with a preexisting environment.

This command will assist you with keeping your environments up to date with the most recent upstream changes.

If the environment was created before v2.6.0, we recommend upgrading your environment for a noticeable performance increase.

If the environment was created before v3.0.1, this will update the elasticsearch image. When updating the elasticsearch image, we need to delete the docker volume so you will need to reindex after running this command.

Elasticsearch

If you have enabled Elasticsearch for a particular environment, you can send requests from the host machine to the Elasticsearch server by prefixing the url path with /__elasticsearch/. For example, if you wanted to hit the /_all/_search/ endpoint of Elasticsearch, the URL would look like: http://<hostname>/__elasticsearch/_all/_search

WP Snapshots

See the section on using WP Snapshots

Running WP CLI Commands

Running WP CLI commands against an environment is easy. First, make sure you are somewhere within your environment directory (by default, this is somewhere within ~/wp-local-docker-sites/<environment>/). Once within the environment directory, simply run 10updocker wp <command>. <command> can be any valid command you would otherwise pass directly to WP CLI.

Examples:

  • 10updocker wp search-replace 'mysite.com' 'mysite.test'
  • 10updocker wp site list

Shell

You can get a shell inside of any container in your environment using the 10updocker shell [<service>] command. If a service is not provided, the phpfpm container will be used by default. Other available services can vary depending on the options selected during creation of the environment, but may include:

  • phpfpm
  • nginx
  • elasticsearch
  • memcached

Logs

Real time container logs are available using the 10updocker logs [<service>] command. If a service is not provided, logs from all containers in the current environment will be shown. To stop logs, type ctrl+c. Available services can vary depending on the options selected during creation of the environment, but may include:

  • phpfpm
  • nginx
  • elasticsearch
  • memcached

Clearing Shared Cache

WP CLI, WP Snapshots, and npm (when building the development version of WordPress) all utilize cache to speed up operations and save on bandwidth in the future.

10updocker cache clear Clears the WP CLI, WP Snapshots, and npm (for WordPress core development) caches.

Updating Docker Images

10updocker image update Will determine which of the docker images utilized by WP Local Docker are present on your system and update them to the latest version available.

Stopping global services

WP Local Docker relies on a set of global services to function properly. To turn off global services, run 10updocker stop all. This will stop all environments and then the global services.

Tools

phpMyAdmin

phpMyAdmin is available as part of the global services stack that is deployed to support all of the environments.

Access phpMyAdmin by navigating to http://localhost:8092.

  • Username: wordpress
  • Password: password

MailCatcher

MailCatcher is available as part of the global services stack that is deployed to support all of the environments. It is preconfigured to catch mail sent from any of the environments created by WP Local Docker.

Access MailCatcher by navigating to http://localhost:1080.

Xdebug

Xdebug is included in the php images but must be manually enabled if you use wp-local-docker 2.7.0 or earlier. To enable Xdebug, set the environment variable ENABLE_XDEBUG to 'true' in the docker-compose.yml file in the root of the project. If you use wp-local-docker 2.8.0 or higher, then new environments will have Xdebug enabled by default.

Make sure your IDE is listening for PHP debug connections and set up a path mapping to your local environment's wordpress/ directory to /var/www/html/ in the container.

Visual Studio Code

  1. Ensure Xdebug is enabled for the environment using the ENABLE_XDEBUG environment variable.
  2. Install the PHP Debug extension.
  3. In your project, go to the Debug view, click "Add Configuration..." and choose PHP environment. A new launch configuration will be created for you.
  4. Set the pathMappings parameter to your local wordpress directory. Example:
"configurations": [
        {
            "name": "Listen for XDebug",
            "type": "php",
            "request": "launch",
            "port": 9003,
            "pathMappings": {
                "/var/www/html": "${workspaceFolder}/wordpress",
            }
        }
]

WPsnapshots

Configuration

If you have not used WP Snapshots with WP Local Docker yet, you'll first need to configure WP Snapshots with your AWS credentials. To configure, run 10updocker wpsnapshots configure <repository> (e.g. 10updocker wpsnapshots configure 10up). You will then be prompted to enter your AWS credentials and a few other configuration details. Once complete, the configuration will be available across all of your WP Local Docker environments.

Pulling an Environment

10updocker wpsnapshots pull <snapshot-id> This command pulls an existing snapshot from the repository into your current environment, replacing your database and wp-content. This command must be run from withing your environment directory (by default, this is somewhere within ~/wp-local-docker-sites/<environment>/).

Searching for an Environment

10updocker wpsnapshots search <search-term> with searches the repository for snapshots. <search-text> will be compared against project names and authors. Searching for "*" will return all snapshots.

Other Commands

10updocker wpsnapshots <command> is the general form for all WP Snapshots commands. <command> is passed directly to WP Snapshots, so any command that WP Snapshots accepts will work in this form. Any command that requires a WordPress environment (pull, create, etc) needs to be run from somewhere within an environment directory (by default, this is somewhere within ~/wp-local-docker-sites/<environment>/).

F.A.Q

Can I run as many concurrent enviroments as I want?

Concurrent environments are limited by the available resources of your host machine.

I am having issues with wp-local-docker, what are the best troubleshooting techniques?

First make sure that Docker and Node are up to date. Then ensure that wp-local-docker is up to date as well by running npm i -g wp-local-docker. Once we are sure everything is up to date, it's generally a good idea to restart docker. Now we will want to make sure we are using the latest of the docker images by running 10updocker image update. Then run 10updocker configure and answer Yes to Do you want to reset your global services configuration? This will reset any customizations you have made.

How to ignore node_modules/ in your container?

One of the primary performance bottlenecks with Docker for Mac is file syncing between the host machine and the Docker containers. The less files that are mounted into the Docker container volumes, the less work Docker needs to do ensuring those files are synced. NPM and the /node_modules/ directories are the worst offenders by far. Since assets are transpiled/compiled from source prior to being used on the frontend, the dependencies in node_modules/ are not actually required to run the site locally, only the compiled dist files.

In order to mitigate the additional pressure node_modules/ puts on Docker filesystem syncing, we can instruct Docker to ignore directories when mounting volumes. Technically, we are instructing Docker to mount nothing to a specific path on the volume, but the effect is the same. See below for a practical example of how one might edit the docker-compose.yml file in the site root:

nginx:
    ...
    volumes:
        - './wordpress:/var/www/html:cached'
        - '/var/www/html/wp-content/themes/{my-theme}/node_modules'
        - '/var/www/html/wp-content/plugins/{my-plugin}/node_modules'
phpfpm:
    ...
    volumes:
        - './wordpres:/var/www/html:cached'
        - '/var/www/html/wp-content/themes/{my-theme}/node_modules'
        - '/var/www/html/wp-content/plugins/{my-plugin}/node_modules'

Note: This action cannot be performed automatically as the specific paths to node_modules/ cannot be determined. You will need to manually determine the path where node_modules/ will be mounted onto the volume.

Once you have made the appropriate changes in your docker-compose.yml file, you must stop and start for the changes to take effect and confirm things have worked.

How do I upgrade an environment to a new version of PHP?

To upgrade to a newer version of PHP, please edit the docker-compose.yml file in the environment you are updating. From:

  phpfpm:
    image: '10up/wp-php-fpm-dev:5.6-ubuntu'
    ...
    volumes:
      - './wordpress:/var/www/html:cached'
      - './config/php-fpm/docker-php-ext-xdebug.ini:/etc/php.d/5.6/fpm/docker-php-ext-xdebug.ini:cached'

To:

  phpfpm:
    image: '10up/wp-php-fpm-dev:7.4-ubuntu'
    ...
    volumes:
      - './wordpress:/var/www/html:cached'
      - './config/php-fpm/docker-php-ext-xdebug.ini:/etc/php.d/7.4/fpm/docker-php-ext-xdebug.ini:cached'

Once you update this run docker-compose down and docker-compose up to rebuild the containers.

Support Level

Active: 10up is actively working on this, and we expect to continue work for the foreseeable future including keeping tested up to the most recent version of WordPress. Bug reports, feature requests, questions, and pull requests are welcome.

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