I spend most of my time working on the command line on my Mac. When working with Local by Flywheel, I find it frustrating to go to the Local by Flywheel app and click a drop-down to SSH into the machine.
Instead, I'd prefer a command I can type from the command line that would:
- Based on the directory I'm currently in, SSH into the correct docker container.
- Based on the directory I'm currently in, within the docker container change to the corresponding directory.
This project includes a script called sshlbf, which does this.
Additionally, I would like to be able to use WP CLI without SSHing in at all.
This project includes a setup script to make this possible (wpcli-lbf-setup).
Copy this project to your local machine. I use Git to make a copy of the project
in my home directory into a new directory called ssh-into-local-by-flywheel.
$ cd ~
$ git clone git@github.com:salcode/ssh-into-local-by-flywheel.git
To use these new commands, sshlbf and wpcli-lbf-setup, we need to add our directory
to our PATH environment variable. If you're not familiar with PATH and environment
variables, I suggest reading this StackExchange entry
What are PATH and other environment variables, and how can I set or use them?.
We are going to add the following lines to ~/.bash_profile.
# Prepend this directory to the PATH environment variable.
# See https://superuser.com/q/284342
export PATH=~/ssh-into-local-by-flywheel:$PATH
Then exit your terminal and start it once again.
Now if you type
$ sshlbf
you should get the message
Failed to SSH in. No .dockerid file was found.
This is a good thing, as it means sshlbf is working properly.
Now we need to configure our individual sites.
The command sshlbf (for SSH Local By Flywheel) needs to know the Docker container name
in order to do its job. To make this work we need to manually create a file called
.dockerid in the root directory for each site we want to use with this.
The .dockerid file will contain one line that has the container name for the site.
To create a .dockerid file.
SSH into the website using the Local by Flywheel option Open Site SSH
Take note of the string in the terminal, it should look something like
/Users/sal/Library/Application\ Support/Local\ by\ Flywheel/ssh-entry/HyjrkJ8eG.sh; exit
This tells use the path to the file Local by Flywheel uses to SSH us in. This file contains the Docker container name (i.e. the docker id).
You can not determine the docker ID when you are SSHed into Local by Flywheel.
Log out of your SSH session. You can do this by typing exit.
We want to view the file Local by Flywheel uses to SSH us in. You can do this with your favorite text editor or from the command line with something like.
$ less /Users/sal/Library/Application\ Support/Local\ by\ Flywheel/ssh-entry/HyjrkJ8eG.sh
Notice, I'm using the path we found in step 2. Also, note I'm not including
the ; exit at the end of the line.
When we view the file we should see something like
export DISABLE_AUTO_TITLE="true"
echo -n -e "\033]0;Iron Code Studio\007"
eval $("/Applications/Local by Flywheel.app/Contents/Resources/extraResources/virtual-machine/vendor/docker/osx/docker-machine" env local-by-flywheel);
"/Applications/Local by Flywheel.app/Contents/Resources/extraResources/virtual-machine/vendor/docker/osx/docker" exec -it 0301fc5e38236161287154e08385e30929dc718ba9e9160cf04e19c169ca4944 /bin/bash;
The long alpha-numeric string near the end is the Docker container name (Docker ID) that we want. Copy this value.
In my case it would be
0301fc5e38236161287154e08385e30929dc718ba9e9160cf04e19c169ca4944
In the project root directory, create a file called .dockerid.
This file should contain only one line and that should be the Docker container name we copied from above.
Now you should be able to run
$ sshlbf
from any directory in this website (e.g. from /wp-content) and be SSHed into
Local by Flywheel and moved to the corresponding directory.
Much of my command line work that requires SSHing into the machine specifically involves using WP CLI. Thanks to work by Morgan Estes, I found I could add some configuration files to my local project that would allow me to use WP CLI from my Mac on the WordPress site running inside Local by Flywheel.
To setup WP CLI to work from the host machine (your Mac), you need to add wp-cli.local.yml and wp-cli.local.php to your project root directory (i.e. next to app/, conf/, and logs/). I've added a helper script to this project to do just this.
On your host machine (your Mac), navigate to the root directory of your project. When you run ls you should see
app conf logs
Then run the helper script in this project
$ wpcli-lbf-setup
Then you'll be prompted for the Database host and Database port, both of these values can be found in the Local by Flywheel interface under your Site > DATABASE settings.
Then you should see a Success message,
Successfully connected to http://example.test
where example.test will be replaced by your local site URL.
Now from your host machine (your Mac) you can enter a WP CLI command and it will be executed in the Local by Flywheel guest website.
$ wp plugin list
If the script shows a failure message, try the following:
- Confirm the site is running in Local
- Double-check the database host and port