Best way to handle a full import/export from a live site

[calebsmithdev]

I've been playing around with a forked version of this all weekend and it's been a solid experience! I've almost nailed down a way for us to use this internally as a way to preview PR against our production sites, which I am super excited about.

I've nailed down my issues really to 1-2 core issues that I am trying to figure out the best way to move forward.

1. Is there a way for me to do a full import/export from a production site as part of the Dockerfile build process? I tried using the wp-cli for import a DB file, but it kept failing, so I'm guessing that's just not an allowed option. The core issue here is we use ACF for a lot of site features + image fields, so I'd hate to have to preset these options ahead of time (and importing widgets doesn't seem to work with WXR).
2. If I can't import from a MySQL to SQLite, do you have any tips for handling seeding data outside of page/post content? It looks like I can set options with wither wp-cli or through the build blueprint, but what about widgets? It looks like I'd probably also have to download our paid plugins through other creative means.

Great project!

[dmsnell]

it looks like your main challenge is the database. if you are running the Playground in a Node environment you can connect to MySQL by setting the connection parameters in wp-config.php

for the browser you will need to convert between MySQL and SQLite unless you also use SQLite in production, something I'm guessing you won't be doing. there are converters and most of the functionality that WordPress uses is basic, so should convert well enough.

there's a zip export and import on playground.wordpress.net that you can explore. I think if you mimick the export from your production site it should be very possible to import it into a Playground environment, assuming you can get the database into an SQLite form or run the Playground from Node.

[calebsmithdev]

Actually I totally mentally skipped over your Node comment. Do you know where I can find that file to edit? I'm down to give that a shot! I see the folder for the php-wasm/node, but I'm not sure which file to try out.

[dmsnell]

if you're talking about wp-config.php then it's merely the normal WordPress config file. you can mount it into the Playground or use the defineWpConfigConsts step in a blueprint to have it configure the settings for you.

for the Node environment I need to better familiarize myself with it, but you can check out wp-now and how they do it.

in fact, wp-now might be the easiest way to explore the Playground from Node. there's support in there for Blueprints, but it looks like we need to release an update to the npm packages because the latest version doesn't include it.

for now if you run wp-now start in a WordPress directory (one that contains wp-config.php and wp-load.php etc) then it will read in your existing config. If that specifies the MySQL connection it should work.

[calebsmithdev]

Oh that's fantastic! I didn't realize wp-now also could support blueprints, so I'll 100% check it out and see how that is all put together.

Thank you so much for the detailed responses! It's been fun learning how some of this is all put together.

[danielbachhuber]

@calebsmithdev Your explorations would make for a great blog post if you'd like to write one!

Also, happy to pair with you on this in the next few weeks if you'd like.

[calebsmithdev]

Agreed! I'm aiming to add that to my backlog. We've been searching for a way for our team to test PR efficiently for a while now (especially when it can be done so quickly with SSR frameworks), so I'm excited for the future here.