WP Utility Script Runner

A product of Burlington Bytes, LLC

Create custom scripts and manage them directly from the WordPress Dashboard. Schedule scripts, handle user input, download reports, and more.

Description

Sometimes, you run into a situation where you just need to manually run a script. The actual logic might be as simple as generating a csv from a query, or changing a user's settings, or even just running a single line of SQL. WordPress makes this difficult.

There are many hacky solutions to the problem, but most of them lack security or are too difficult for anyone but a developer to run or just take too long to build. That's where we come in.

WP Utility Script Runner lets you start with a simple 17 line template, add in your custom code, save to the server, and in minutes you have a secure, fully featured utility, that you can safely run from the WordPress dashboard.

But that's not all! With a few extra lines of code, your utility can:

• Accept user input
• Accept file input
• Run at a future date and time
• Run on a recurring schedule
• Run large tasks by breaking them up into several smaller tasks, and saving state.
• Create reports and other output files

Installation

1. Upload the plugin files to the /wp-content/plugins/plugin-name directory, or install the plugin through the WordPress plugins screen directly.
2. Activate the plugin through the 'Plugins' screen in WordPress
3. Use the Settings->Utility Scripts screen to manage and run utility scripts

Frequently Asked Questions

Why would I ever need to run a script on-demand, rather than on page load?

There are many times running on page load is not the best option:

• You may want to ensure that a task only happens once, when many people may be visiting the page
• You may need to capture some form of output from the script, without showing it to all users
• You may have multiple team members working on the site, and not want to harm their workflow with your debugging output
• You may need to be able to have non-developers run the script periodically, for tasks like report generation

There are too many other use cases to count. If you don't see a use case, you probably don't need this tool, and that's ok.

Why not just write some custom PHP and tuck it in a subfolder?

There are many caveats to taking this approach, but mostly it just leaves you writing a lot of (probably insecure) code.

To build a custom script properly, you need to:

• Handle security on your own.
• Either duplicate or side-load any WordPress functions you need
• Build an interface and form handler
• Handle downloads
• Handle cron
• Get around PHP_MAX_EXECUTION_TIME

That can be a massive amount of code, for a script that could be as simple as a single SQL query.

Why not WP-CLI?

We love WP-CLI, but sometimes the command line is just not the right tool for the job. Often you can't get WP-CLI on shared hosts, and users who may need to use the utilities may not be comfortable with the command line. But stay tuned, WP-CLI integration is on our roadmap.

Why not (Insert Solution Here)?

The most common answer is feature completion and ease of access. A utility script can contain as little as 17 lines of overhead, before you are free and clear to write whatever you need. We dare you to find a lighter-weight, more feature-complete option. We wrote WP Utility Script Runner because there wasn't one.

Is it possible to get down to under 17 lines of boilerplate?

Technically, yes, but you'll be sacrificing a lot of features. You can write your utility in "legacy mode", where it can be written as simply as:

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