WP Yak

Written in familiar PHP, WP Yak (WPY) is a simple, but powerful deployment tool for WordPress Plugin & Theme Development

Tested only for GitHub (BitBucket & GitLab pending). Don't use yet.

Using remote git repos on GitHub, BitBucket or your own self-hosted instance of GitLab, you can automate your deployment workflow between development, staging and production servers.

Whether you're building a theme, plugin, mu-plugin or combinations of those for a client website, WP Yak will automatically deploy the latest code intended for a server, based on your configuration. Here's an example:

Example Workflow

git branch	workflow stage	server
master	Development	https://dev.yoursite.com
review	Code Review	- NA -
custom	Custom Stage	https://custom.yoursite.com
staging	Staging	https://staging.yoursite.com
production	Live/ Production	https://yoursite.com

• While developing in a team: git push origin master will deploy code to https://dev.yoursite.com
• Once the code is reviewed internally and is ready for client review: git push origin staging will deploy code to https://staging.yoursite.com
• Once the clients' reviewed everything and gives a go ahead for going live: git push origin production will deploy code on the live site, https://yoursite.com

Slim & Faster Deploys

Instead of cloning and maintaining the whole repository on servers, WP Yak tries to only deploy the code without the scm data (or the .git directory, etc). Using git archive, WP Yak is able to only copy the files at a particular branch or tag, without the commit history:

git archive --remote=git@github.com:your-organisation-or-username/your-plugin.git

GitHub doesn't allow git archive, but fortunately, GitHub supports svn clients. So, we use the svn equivalent of git archive, svn export. See: http://stackoverflow.com/a/18324428/1589999

Regular Deploys

Of course, if you wish to maintain the whole repository on your servers, you can disable the slim deploy. To do that, set the SLIM constant to false in wp-yak-config/constants.php.

This way, WP Yak will use git pull and maintain a local copy with commit history inside the wp-yak/wpd-repos/ directory and copy over the latest code to the deploy path. This is done, instead of maintaining the repo in the actual deploy path (say wp-content/themes/your-theme) to prevent over-writing by a manual upload. Without this, if someone uploads the theme/ plugin manually, the scm information will be overwritten and the deploy would break. With this mechanism, a manual upload will be overwritten in the next push!

Pre-Requisites

Make sure that the following are installed:

• git
• svn for Slim Deploys using GitHub

Usage

1. Getting Started

1. Install WP Yak
2. Setup schema for GitLab
3. Configure repos
4. Setup constants

1.1. Install WP Yak

Right now there're no automattic installation methods, you'd have to clone this repo or archive its master branch using git or svn or upload the files manually.

If you're using EasyEngine, follow these steps, after logging in via ssh, clone this repository to your webroot

git clone git@github.com:Yapapaya/wp-yak.git /var/www/yoursite.com/htdocs/

(Optional)Move wdp-config outside the web root for security, especially if you're using tokens

mv /var/www/yoursite.com/htdocs/wp-yak/wp-yak-config /var/www/yoursite.com/wp-yak-config

1.2. (Optional) Set up schema for GitLab

If your remote repository is on GitHub or BitBucket, you can skip step 1.2 and start with 1.3.

If your remote repository is on a self-hosted instance of GitLab CE, you need to set up schema for it.

vim /var/www/yoursite.com/htdocs/wp-yak-config/webhook-schema.php

or

vim /var/www/yoursite.com/wp-yak-config/webhook-schema.php

The schema for GitLab looks like this

// Payload Schema for GitLab Instance
// your Gitlab instance's domain
'git.yoursite.com' => array(
	// your GitLab instance's IP range in CIDR format
	// use http://www.ipaddressguide.com/cidr to get it
	"ip_whitelist" => '127.0.0.0/32',
	"ip_param" => 'HTTP_CF_CONNECTING_IP',
	"token" => array(
		"header" => 'HTTP_X_Gitlab_Token',
		"hashed" => false,
	),
	"ref" => array(
		"param" => array( 'ref' ),
		"pattern" => '/^refs\/head\//',
	),
	"branch_name" => array(
		"param" => array( 'ref' ),
		"pattern" => '/^refs\/head\/(.*)$/',
	),
	"git_archive" => true,
),

The key for each schema is the domain name of the remote. The keys inside the schema:

• ip_whitelist A whitelisted range of IP's
• ip_param The header that contains the IP of the remote. Leave it empty if your server directly talks to remote without a proxy in between. In the example above, the HTTP_CF_CONNECTING_IP is where CloudFlare stores the webhook's original IP address.
• token GitHub and GitLab (but not Bitbucket) allow you to set an additional security token that is sent as a header.
• header The header that contains the security token
• hashed GitHub hashes the security key, GitLab doesn't. Set it to false, if it isn't hashed or true, if it is.
• ref Schema for the ref (branch/tag) the payload is for.
• param The parameter that contains the ref information
• pattern The regex pattern to match against to know that it is a branch
• branch_name Schema for the branch name in the payload
• param The parameter that contains the branch name
• pattern The regex pattern to match against to get the branch name
• git_archive Whether the remote supports git archive command. Is true for everyone except GitHub

To setup deployments with your own Gitlab instance, just change the key (to the domain name) and optionally,set the ip_whitelist. To account for Cloudflare or similar proxies, set the ip_param. Nothing else needs to be changed.

1.3. Configure Repos

Open repository configuration

vim /var/www/yoursite.com/htdocs/wp-yak-config/repositories.php

or

vim /var/www/yoursite.com/wp-yak-config/repositories.php

For each of your repos, create a config item in the $config array. There are enough examples in the file itself. Each item is intern an array with the following keys

• git_url The git url of the repo in the format git@github.com:your-organisation-or-username/your-theme.git
• type ('theme', 'plugin', 'mu-plugin') The type of project that will be deployed.
• branch The name of the branch to deploy.
• token (optional) For security, gitLab & GitHub allow you to set a secret token when setting up webhooks.

1.4. (Optional) Setup Environment Constants

Open constants file

Open repository configuration

vim /var/www/yoursite.com/htdocs/wp-yak-config/constants.php

or

vim /var/www/yoursite.com/wp-yak-config/constants.php

define( 'LOG', true );

(not implement, yet) This logs all the requests, for debugging or any other reason.

define( 'LOGFILE', '/path/to/directory' );

(not implement, yet) Log to a custom file, instead of the default.

define( 'SLIM', true);

By default, WP Yak performs slim deploys using git archive or svn export(for GitHub). This means that the whole repository is not maintained on the server. This can save up a lot of space and data and is similar to downloading a zip file of the specified branch or tag without the commit history (the .git directory).

Set this to false, if you want to or need to maintain the whole git repository on your servers.

2. Setup Deploy Keys

Generate ssh key pairs on each of your servers (if not done already) and add the public key as deploy key for each of your repos.

• Instructions for GitHub
• Instructions for BitBucket
• Instructions for GitLab

3. Setup Webhooks

Setup a webhook on your remote git repository. For the webhook url, if your repository is git@github.com:your-organisation-or-username/your-theme.git, use the following format:

https://yoursite.com/wpd/wpy.php?deploy=your-theme

where the value of the deploy parameter of the querystring is the same as the name of the repository without the .git suffix.

• Instructions for GitHub
• Instructions for BitBucket
• Instructions for GitLab

4. Deploy

Now, write code as usual and push to a branch. If the branch is mapped to a server, the code will get automatically deployed.

No cloning or other setup needed. WP Yak will automatically clone, initialise, pull, etc as needed.