Work with WordPress from an External File to be Run from the Command Line

Using the WP CLI

In the HTML root, create a PHP file. It should be at the same directory level as the wp-load.php file.

Run wp eval-file file-name.php to run the script. If using Ddev, run it as ddev wp eval-file file-name.php.

Using the PHP command

In the HTML root, create a PHP file. It should be at the same directory level as the wp-load.php file.

At the top of that file, add:

<?php
define( 'WP_USE_THEMES', false );
require_once( './wp-load.php' );

That is enough to set up the connection to the WordPress database and access the WordPress functions.

From there, a query can be written for example to get all posts of a certain taxonomy that have an ACF field populated:

$posts = new WP_Query( array(
    'posts_per_page' => - 1,  // retrieve all items without regard for pagination rules
    'tax_query'      => array(
        array(
            'taxonomy' => 'my-taxonomy',   // taxonomy name
            'meta_key' => 'my-acf-field-name',  // an ACF field
            "operator" => "EXISTS",
        )
    )
) );

if ( $posts->have_posts() ) {
    while ( $posts->have_posts() ) {
        $posts->the_post();
        // do something with the post 
    }
} else {
    echo "No posts found\n";
}

The file can then be executed by running: $ php my-file-name.php. If working in Ddev, first SSH into the environment: $ ddev ssh and then run the file.

To make the file a bit safer, add the following to only allow execution from the command line:

if (php_sapi_name() != 'cli') {
    echo "This application must be run on the command line.\n";
    exit();
}

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