Getting WP CLI Working With MAMP

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1. Hey Christopher – thanks loads for this. I’m using MAMP Pro and getting this error – really don’t seem to be able to solve it. I’m terrible at my unix knowledge which doesn’t help, but any other ideas would be appreciated. The weird thing is I get the error using WPCLI but if I go to the WP folder in a browser it all works fine?

   Thanks in advance

   Mike

   Reply

   1. Hi Mike,

      Which of the two errors are you seeing? You can check your $PATH variable by doing echo $PATH in terminal, you should be able to see your MAMP PHP path in this.

      You could also try to add the following to your ~/.bash_profile instead, as this is another way to get WP CLI to recognise MAMPs version of PHP (switch the version if you need to):

      export WP_CLI_PHP="/Applications/MAMP/bin/php/php5.5.14/bin/php"

      If you’re still struggling, you can shoot me a message on twitter. @crgeary

2. Hi !

   Thanks for the Tips !

   I’ve updated my PATH variable

   /Applications/MAMP/bin/php/php5.5.10/bin/php:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/opt/X11/bin:/Applications/MAMP/Library/bin

   but I still have an error (in french)
   “Error: Erreur de connexion à la base de données (–>Can not connect to DDB)”

   A really strange thing, because I can create the DDB throught Wp-Cli “wp db create”

   Any idea ?

   Thanks !

   Reply

   1. Sorry, not too sure. Here are a couple of things to keep in mind though:

      1. Anytime you edit .bash_profile you will need to re-source the file using the `source` command. Or alternatively you can close terminal and re-open it.

      2. Is MAMP running? You get the same error if you try to run the `wp` command when MAMP isn’t running (because the mysql server isn’t running).

      3. You could try and run `wp cli info` which will tell you which PHP version wp cli is trying to use. You basically need to get this to be your MAMP version. I see you have tried to set it to `/usr/bin/php` which will not work as MAMP doesn’t touch this file at all. I’ve included what I get when i run this command at the end of the email.

      4. It’s possible that MAMP is not using version 5.5.10 of php (at least I cannot tell from my desk), just double check what version of PHP MAMP is using (you can do this from the MAMP Interface).

      It’s hard to diagnose from this end, so if you cannot figure it out from the above, then i’m afraid I cannot help. It’s worth getting it working though, I use WP CLI to install & setup out base install of WordPress and it saves me 45 minutes each install. Here is a link if you’re interested.

      Good luck with this 🙂

      Here’s the result of `wp cli info` when I run it on my Mac 🙂

      PHP binary:/Applications/MAMP/bin/php/php5.5.14/bin/php
      PHP version:5.5.14
      php.ini used:/Applications/MAMP/bin/php/php5.5.14/conf/php.ini
      WP-CLI root dir:phar://wp-cli.phar
      WP-CLI global config:/Users/developer/.wp-cli/config.yml
      WP-CLI project config:
      WP-CLI version:0.17.0

3. Hey Christopher,

   I appreciate this post and I’m stoked to adapt your WP bash script for new installs. I downloaded WP-CLI and made the changes to the bash profile but something strange (and possibly unrelated) is happening. When I go to run “wp download core” in a new directory in the htdocs folder, it says “Downloading WordPress 4.4.1 (en_US)…” like you’d expect. But then it just hangs for 20 seconds or so and before going back to the terminal prompt for the directory. No files downloaded. Not even any errors. Any ideas?

   Reply

   1. Hi Justin,

      I’ve not encountered this before, but sounds like it might be something to do with permissions in your directory, or perhaps there’s an issue with the download to your computer.. You can try running this again with debug mode and see what you get in the output:

      wp core download --debug

4. Hey Christopher – hope you could help me.

   I followed the install instructions at wp-cli.org and am unable to connect to database. I am using a newly installed (this morning) version of MAMP PRO.

   “`which php
   /usr/bin/php

   echo $WP_CLI_PHP
   /Applications/MAMP/bin/php/php5.5.14/bin/php

   wp –info
   PHP binary: /usr/bin/php
   PHP version: 5.5.14
   php.ini used:
   WP-CLI root dir: phar://wp-cli.phar
   WP-CLI packages dir:
   WP-CLI global config:
   WP-CLI project config:
   WP-CLI version: 0.24.1“`

   Then, I followed your instructions above to no avail. Afterwards I follow the directions below from another source:

   `sudo -s`
   `curl wp-cli.org/packages/phar/wp-cli.phar > /usr/share/wp-cli.phar`
   `echo ‘/Applications/MAMP/bin/php/php5.3.14/bin/php /usr/share/wp-cli.phar $@’ > /usr/bin/wp`
   `chmod +x /usr/bin/wp`

   and I am still getting `Error: Error establishing a database connection`

   Reply

5. Hello,

   For anyone reading this and still getting an error establishing database connection, this is what fixed it for me:
   When appending MAMP’s php to your path, be sure to leave off the php directory. So from the example, it would look like this:

   export PATH="/Applications/MAMP/bin/php/php5.5.14/bin:$PATH"

   Reply

   1. Thanks Gary,

      I’ve updated the article to reflect this. This was a typo, thanks for spotting it 😉

6. Hi Christopher! Very helpful 👍 – thanks for sharing!

   Reply

7. Worked a treat, thank you!

   Reply

8. If someone have MySQL 8 it could be conflict between wp-cli and MySQL version

   Reply