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CloudFoundry PHP example application: Wordpress

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CloudFoundry PHP Example Application: Wordpress

This is an example application which can be run on CloudFoundry using the PHP Build Pack.

This is an out-of-the-box implementation of Wordpress 3.8.1. It's an example of how common PHP applications can easily be run on CloudFoundry.

Usage

  1. Clone the app (i.e. this repo).
git clone https://github.com/dmikusa-pivotal/cf-ex-worpress.git cf-ex-wordpress
cd cf-ex-wordpress
  1. If you don't have one already, create a MySQL service. With Pivotal Web Services, the following command will create a free MySQL database through ClearDb.
cf create-service cleardb spark my-test-mysql-db

  1. Edit the manifest.yml file. Change the 'host' attribute to something unique. Then under "services:" change "mysql-db" to the name of your MySQL service. This is the name of the service that will be bound to your application and thus used by Wordpress.

  2. Like every normal Wordpress install, edit htdocs/wp-config.php and change the secret keys. These should be uniqe for every installation. You can generate these using the WordPress.org secret-key service.

  3. Push it to CloudFoundry.

cf push

Access your application URL in the browser. You'll see the familiar Wordpress install screen. Setup your password and your all set.

How It Works

When you push the application here's what happens.

  1. The local bits are pushed to your target. This is small, five files around 25k. It includes the changes we made and a build pack extension for Wordpress.
  2. The server downloads the PHP Build Pack and runs it. This installs HTTPD and PHP.
  3. The build pack sees the extension that we pushed and runs it. The extension downloads the stock Wordpress file from their server, unzips it and installs it into the htdocs directory. It then copies the rest of the files that we pushed and replaces the default Wordpress files with them. In this case, it's just the wp-config.php file.
  4. At this point, the build pack is done and CF runs our droplet.

Changes

These changes were made to prepare Wordpress to run on CloudFoundry.

  1. Edit wp-config.php, configure to use CloudFoundry database.
--- wp-config-sample.php	2013-10-24 18:58:23.000000000 -0400
+++ wp-config.php	2014-03-05 15:44:23.000000000 -0500
@@ -14,18 +14,22 @@
  * @package WordPress
  */

+// ** Read MySQL service properties from _ENV['VCAP_SERVICES']
+$services = json_decode($_ENV['VCAP_SERVICES'], true);
+$service = $services['cleardb-n/a'][0];  // pick the first MySQL service
+
 // ** MySQL settings - You can get this info from your web host ** //
 /** The name of the database for WordPress */
-define('DB_NAME', 'database_name_here');
+define('DB_NAME', $service['credentials']['name']);

 /** MySQL database username */
-define('DB_USER', 'username_here');
+define('DB_USER', $service['credentials']['username']);

 /** MySQL database password */
-define('DB_PASSWORD', 'password_here');
+define('DB_PASSWORD', $service['credentials']['password']);

 /** MySQL hostname */
-define('DB_HOST', 'localhost');
+define('DB_HOST', $service['credentials']['hostname'] . ':' . $service['credentials']['port']);

 /** Database Charset to use in creating database tables. */
 define('DB_CHARSET', 'utf8');

Caution

Please read the following before using Wordpress in production on CloudFoundry.

  1. Wordpress is designed to write to the local file system. This does not work well with CloudFoundry, as an application's local storage on CloudFoundry is ephemeral. In other words, Wordpress will write things to the local disk and they will eventually disappear.

You can work around this in some cases, like with media, by using a storage service like Amazon S3 or CloudFront. However there may be other cases where Wordpress or Wordpress plugins try to write to the disk, so test your installation carefully.

  1. This is not an issue with Wordpress specifically, but PHP stores session information to the local disk. As mentioned previously, the local disk for an application on CloudFoundry is ephemeral, so it is possible for you to lose session and session data. If you need reliable session storage, look at storing session data in an SQL database or with a NoSQL service.

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CloudFoundry PHP example application: Wordpress