.Net Foundation On .NET, 28 Aug 2020

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From YouTube: Wordpress on .NET Core

Description

Peachpie is an open source project that allows for a seamless interoperability between PHP and .NET applications.

In this episode, Benjamin and Jakub from the Peachier project show us how they enable developers to run Wordpress on .NET Core.

[01:19] - Why run Wordpress on .NET?
[03:22] - What enables Wordpress to run on .NET
[07:32] - Getting started with Wordpress in .NET Core
[16:43] - How does updating to newer Wordpress versions work?
[18:54] - Using custom themes and plugins
[27:40] - Migrating over an existing Wordpress site
[29:48] - Creating Wordpress plugins with .NET
[34:06] - Publishing the application
[35:27] - Customer feedback

PeachPie Homepage
https://www.peachpie.io/

PeachPie on GitHub
https://github.com/peachpiecompiler

Dynamic Language Runtime Overview
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/framework/reflection-and-codedom/dynamic-language-runtime-overview

Introduction to ASP.NET Core
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/aspnet/core/introduction-to-aspnet-core?view=aspnetcore-3.1

#wordpress #dotnet #aspnetcore #blog

A

Wordpress is a really popular cms that tons of folks leverage for their businesses every day. But did you know that you could also run wordpress on.net core in this episode? We're going to continue our conversation with the folks that work on peachbuy to see just exactly how we can do that.

A

Hey everyone welcome to another episode of the on.net show and in this episode we're going to take a look at the peach pipe project and we're going to see how we can run wordpress on top of net, which I think is a really interesting use case. But before we do that, let's introduce our guests in general. Why don't you tell us really quickly about who you are.

B

Cool my name is ben, I'm a co-founder together with jacob of io level, which is the company that develops and administers peachbuy awesome.

C

My name is jacob and I work on this project for quite a few years started from the university, so it's kind of hobby to us and we are maintaining this project for, like I don't know three years so we are making this wordpress running on.net for quite some time already.

A

Nice, no for for folks that may may or not know like wordpress, is a really popular blogging blogging systems cms, you know like we use it to create websites and content, and you know a lot of folks run their businesses on it. People run their store storefronts on it. You know tons of stuff right, so it's a pretty big deal when it comes to actually putting a presence on the internet, but I don't know a lot of folks that are actually running that on.net.

A

So, like tell me a little bit about how did that use case? Come about.

B

Yeah, I don't think anybody besides us has ever done it. I mean there are similar projects that have tried to simulate something like wordpresson.net, but nobody that we're aware of other than uh or people that have used peach by perhaps have done it, but no other project to our awareness has done it before so yeah. As you said, wordpress is a super super popular platform. It powers, something like 30 of the internet, is extremely rich.

B

I mean it has tens of thousands of plugins and contrary to what some people might say, it's still by far the most popular and most widely used content management system on the internet super easy to set up. It has everything you need, and so the the objective or kind of the reason why we've done this before is that net is obviously a very powerful and very popular platform as well, but it tends to lack the content management system ecosystem that php has wordpress, isn't the only cms in php is super rich.

B

So what we thought was why not combine the best of both of those worlds, so you get wordpress, which is amazing in terms of all the plugins that you have. You can basically build a website from scratch in a very, very short time period and then combine it with all the advantages that.net has to offer, which is performance security, a huge company backing it constant development, constant bug, fixes constant performance and security improvement. So we figured peach pie is a nice bridge between both of those worlds.

A

Nice, so for folks again for folks that don't know so peach by like is that glue, that's in the middle, so wordpress is running php like as far as I know, the entire thing is written in php and obviously.net. We have c sharp. We have f sharp. We have visual basic and our families of tools. So what exactly had to happen to get wordpress to run on net? Like did you rewrite wordpress or like like what are tell me about like? What's the secret sauce there like what's happening to make that happen.

C

Like almost we've made a tool that rewrites wordpress.

A

C

uh We created a project called peachpie that is a compiler built on top of the rosland platform.

C

It's a set of runtime and base class libraries and everything that allows to compile a php project, a set of php files into a regular.netproject.net dll file. So I can create- or you can create a nuget package, for example, or it doesn't regular dotnet project out of the php files.

C

So what we did is uh took all the wordpress source files just like that uh cut and paste them into a folder and compile them into a dll file and thanks to the pitch pi project, we are able to make use of this compilation and integrate it into asp.net core website running on the kestrel web server without any php without any unmanaged code. Everything is running purely on on manage.net, taking advantage of the garbage collection adjusting the compiler.

C

uh Everything like this, because everything all the ecosystem making this possible is rewritten from scratch in c sharp as a managed as a managed solution right. So it actually compiles the whole wordpress into a dll file.

A

So one of the things I'm curious about too is wordpress has a really rich ecosystem of plugins and extensions, and you know tons of folks that are creating different experiences on top of wordpress, so outside of the core package or the core, you know application that is wordpress itself.

A

What does that mean for like the rest of the ecosystem? Like can I bring in any wordpress extension and plug-in and have it work within this new world, or do we have to do some additional work there as well.

C

C

We have uh we have this written on our documentation page, because there is a lot of ways of approaching this. I can. I can show you in the demo how to how to achieve uh using other plugins into your wordpress setup on.net.

C

uh Basically, basically, you can you can just copy your existing plugins into a project, compile them and have them as well compiled and as well apart as your wordpress installation. So first option is to compile them and create a project.net project from them.

C

Second option is we actually, uh we actually automatically compiled most of the plugins and themes into nuget packages and already providing them uh on the nougat feed, so you can actually just add dependencies to those nugets representing all the all those single plugins and themes into your into your application, and just like that, you just you just have them and also you can actually create plugins for wordpress in c-sharp or in razer, partial views or stuff like this.

C

So if you, if you really want you, can you can implement your uh your wordpress plugin in c sharp and use it in your wordpress on.net installation.

A

Nice, why don't we? Why don't we switch over and take a look at a demo, because I really want to see wordpress running on.net like I'm, really excited.

C

To see this all right, so, let's start with an empty asp.net core project which I have writing here. You can as well use your existing uh use. Your existing asp.net core application, where you already have your razer views, your your existing stuff, so I create a new one empty one without https, just for the sake of simplicity and that's it in here we have the default uh default estimated core and the wordpress is actually already compiled and already provided on the nuget on the nougat.org feed. So we add a dependency.

C

The the nuget dependency to the package called pitchfight.org.

C

Core it's a prerelease package, so this one and I'll just install this package.

C

So I have my spl.net core uh application running on net core 3.0 or 3.1. I guess, but it also works with the latest 5.0 and and the latest preview versions as well.

C

Let's wait for packages to restore.

A

But essentially you're telling me to add wordpress to a mtsp.net core application. It's it's just like adding a new get package right. Yes,.

C

A

Very familiar does.

C

A

Of developers right, like that's, you know, that's something we do all the time.

C

That's right yeah, because the wordpress, uh as it is, is just compiled in the nougat package. So the nuget package contains the dll file with all the php code compiled into a dll file. So there are no source files. There is just a dll file and then there is uh there are the css files, javascripts and images as as a content uh contained in the nuget nuget file. So right now I have added.

C

B

C

Have yeah I have the package beach pipe wordpress and what I need to do, let's make it the first step in our request pipeline. I just write, use wordpress.

C

That's it now I have the wordpress in my asp.net core. This method is implemented into in the package that I referenced. It's a helper helper method that adds the request, handling and makes use of the compiled wordpress scripts, and when request comes from your request, python, it forwards it to the compiled script and do the magic. I can also use the familiar familiar services at wordpress, where I can configure certain things.

C

It's very helpful because I need to set up, for example, my uh database password, which will be, for example, like password now now, I'm ready to uh to run my application, but one thing that wordpress needs is a database.

C

uh This is a usual usual issue with uh with the wordpress that you have to set up your database and you have to create a single empty database in it. So for this purpose, I really like what I can do with a docker where.

C

Where you can run your mysql database uh as a virtual uh as a virtual virtual container.

A

C

So for this demo, I'm using this command docker run where mysql root password will be my password.

C

My seo database, which is the initial empty database that will be created, is wordpress and it will be running on xposed, port 3306 as usual. So let's just start this docker container, and now I have my database, which is very important, and with this I can run actually wordpress. The default options of the wordpress are localhost and all the default settings. I just make sure the password is right and let's run the application, which consists of like two two source files in.

C

Here: okay, now it's debugging and working: let's bring. Let's bring the browser in here.

A

And one of the things that I'm thinking about as you're showing me this like, so we work with a lot of different folks from students and startups and all kinds of folks, but I can imagine, there's there's probably a huge audience for people that are like give me an easy way to get started with wordpress and give me an easy way to extend it. But I might not necessarily know php, but I might know another language like. I might know not a dot-net language like c-sharp or f-sharp, and so you're saying now pretty much.

A

We could start to leverage some of our existing skills as net developers and use wordpress, and you know a host of other tools was inside of the the php ecosystem. To kind of you know like make these really interesting experiences.

C

Yeah, that's right because, what's great about the solution, is I don't need to install php? I don't need to install any web server. I don't need to install like anything. I just have my visual studio or the dotnet sdk and I add a reference to a nuget package and that's it right. So uh I'm not sure. What's taking so long, let's start.

A

You may be mad at your.

C

C

This might be faster yeah because okay, I see on the first round of wordpress, is touching all the tables that do not exist, so it takes a little bit so now I can see the the usual wordpress installation screen. Let's speak english continue now you can see in here it's doing a bunch of stuff like trying to use the tables.

C

So my my wordpress username.

C

My email, regular wordpress installation screen, but now I uh on this computer I don't have any php. So it's oh, it's all running on.net as it is an application. So uh it was just like this. I didn't have to do anything else and now now that's it.

C

C

C

A

And so for folks, that are familiar with wordpress like this is this, is this? Is the admin page? This is what it you know. The typical flow looks like right, so you could go and you can create pages, and you can just you know, get set up users and configure a lot of different settings, upload, media and all that type of stuff.

B

Yeah, there's only one key difference, and that is that we don't have a single file of php running anywhere on the computer on the server no php, because.

C

If we navigate to uh to our project, let's open a folder and uh it might be a little bit smaller, but you can see the the idea there is my compiled application. There are a bunch of dll files. One of the files are pitch byte wordpress in here, which is like 16 megabytes uh dll file containing all the script files, and there are no sources. There are no source codes.

C

There is just this wordpress folder with images and css files, which also can be embedded as a resources, but there are no no source files, so nobody can can hack your server by by modifying your source files on the server, because everything is compiled as a dll file and signed with a strong signature.

C

So it can be. It can be modified in this way.

A

C

And this is uh this: is it you can see uh wordpress.net edit, a small toolbox in here, for example, where you can see? Oh, your framework is dotnet core 315 and you are using 300 megabytes of memory and your cpu usage. So we are adding little those small bits in here, so you can see some advantages. Of.Net.

A

I'm guessing one of the things that you do too as well. Is you probably keep up with the current releases of wordpress so as new versions of wordpress come out, I'm guessing. That's just me updating the nuget package. Yes,.

C

Yes, the nuget package has some kind of version, so we have all the products automated. So when the new wordpress coming out, it just fires uh the action on the devops on the azure devops and creates a new package, run the tests and publish the package. So we have immediately the new versions of wordpress available. So.

A

That's amazing! So so you don't you don't have to code anything like it, just oh new version of wordpress boom and then you just have a package. Yes,.

C

That's amazing developers, because this is these targets like companies that don't like uh their websites being modified without their uh without knowing it, so they just they just uh changes the version. They just change the version of the dependency of the wordpress. So if they want a new wordpress, they just change the version of the dependency of this of this package and they have new wordpress.

A

C

Now they can be.

A

Very intentional right, because you know we know, we all know that software likes to auto update itself, sometimes.

C

A

Auto updating causes a lot of problems for a lot of people right.

B

A

I can have more um more control over when that process happens and how and when I want to do it, you know that's that that that that's like tremendous benefits for a business, that's.

C

Right in this area of of developers of companies- it's it's like you said I. I agree that uh a lot of regular users want their wordpress just to be up to date and they don't care it's sometimes it just breaks some things, but in in this.

C

In this scenario it doesn't matter, but we went with this approach where you have to change your version and the uh the updates are not automatic. Of course you can just script it and and do it, but uh in this scenario it's not like this.

A

Got it so, let's talk a little bit about plugins now right, so, okay, we spoke about a little bit in the beginning, so wordpress has this whole ecosystem of not just plugins, but also themes and visuals, and all that types of stuff. If I wanted to start customizing, my wordpress installation talk to me about the options I have. What can I do you know like? How can I start like making this more of a customized experience for me, yeah.

C

um There's a lot of ways of modifying the workers. First thing: the core wordpress is compiled and you cannot modify it, which is uh like a safety mechanism of not breaking anything.

A

C

But uh for this purpose there are plugins and themes uh a lot of users, a lot of companies. They have their own plugins, their own teams.

C

A lot of them also uses the themes and plugins that are already there on the on the wordpress.org.

C

Like catalog of plugins, so the important difference is uh the plugins, and teams has to be pre-compiled as a dls file as well. You just cannot uh pick the source files and throw them in and just make them running like in regular workers. They have to be compiled.

C

So what we did with is the project actually modifies this dashboard. So what you see here are the list of existing plugins as you know them, but they are actually not the plugins uh from the wordpress.org.

C

They are plugins that have been compiled already and what you see here is a view on the nuget feed, with all the plugins compartment to nuget packages. So in here I have uh actually nougat packages that I can install and this installation, like downloads, the nuget package to my local local computer, extracts it and in runtime it loads the assembly into the memory, and I can activate it. So the the experience is pretty much the same, with the difference that, on the background, you are actually downloading signed.

C

Nougat packages from the ssl storage and everything is secure, but experience is pretty much the same with the difference. There are no sources on the server just the nuget file and the dll file.

C

That's the one way of doing it, of course, since this is uh since this is a nuget feed with the plugins, I can manage the nuget packages right from the visual studio, so I have added the nuget fit in here. It's https, uh slash, feed, dot, pitch pi, dot, io, slash, wp.net, slash something we have it on the website. We can show it later.

C

So since I have this fit in here, I can clear the thing I can see the plugins right in the nuget uh management in visual studio, so we just real things. Those are nougat packages, uh but they are actually nuget packages containing plugins plugins for for wordpress.

A

C

And from here I can, I can install them as well or I can uh install them on the command line. So I can, I can write, typical.net, add and name of the plugin on the command line, like uh I don't remember the exact syntax, but uh you get the idea right. There's.

B

Also, uh I mean a lot of companies, of course have their own specific plugins. So if you have your own plugin that you've written or your own theme, you can of course also chuck that into the respective folder and then compile everything all at once. Yes,.

C

We have we have a sample project for for that, so let's switch to a project on a github called pitch by wordpress.

C

Which demonstrates this idea.

A

So pretty much if it's not in your nuget feed or your repository, but I do have this plug-in. I can download it or if it's my own, I could put it in some location on disk.

C

You can take your custom plugins, yes, that's awesome!

C

So uh so in this project I have the very same project as I've shown before it's an empty asp.net, core application, where I uh we're adding the wordpress, but also I have the additional project in here called my content and anything I put in here in the same directory structure as I'm used to from wordpress. It gets compiled to the dll and gets referenced by my application in here.

C

I have the reference to my content and it gets a part of my my wordpress, so in here I had a sample plugin called hello, dolly which is in php, let's put a breakpoint in here and once I run this once I run this.

C

The wordpress will see this plugin. I just modify this thing because I've installed the wordpress on this url and it requires me to to keep the same url so using the services at wordpress. I can modify the wordpress options right from the c-sharp or I can use the upsettings.json file as well, and in here you can. You can modify the regular options of the wordpress as uh as people are used to, because there are a lot of like global constants that you can modify and set them to various things, but usually in wordpress.

C

You have to like change the source code, so you will change the configuration it's one of the features of php that people are used to. They just modify the source code, so they can configure their project. So we just pick those configurations and move them into the like descriptive way of of options.

C

So you can change your options right in here or or in the upsetting the json file. So I'm telling my wordpress right here by referencing, the hello dolly and let's run the.

C

App, so if you have any custom, plugins or themes or anything, you just put it into this folder and it will be there.

A

And essentially you're pretty much just pointing it at that folder with php in it right. So it's it's a php folder, but it's not a peach pie project. It doesn't have that ms build project.

C

Oh, this is, this is actually the pitch pipe project. Oh.

A

It is oh okay,.

C

Because I can put a php file in it, it gets compiled, so ah this is actually yeah. You are right, you're right. uh This is a pitch by project, but even much simpler, because um because we've made a very simple small sdk for ms built that contains all the properties and everything that's needed for the plugin to be properly compiled.

C

So this is very simple project file, just those five lines that will fire the php compiler and do all the stuff in here this actually references the the pitch by sdk and and upon build. It compiles all the php files in the project into a dll and make it working.

C

C

I'm actually not sure.

C

A

Loading loading loading yeah, but that's really interesting. I think that's a good option for folks to have these different plugins right, um so I could just dump. So I could say these are all the plugins I want, or I could have different projects with different plugins put them in these projects, and then I could reference them as I need them within.

C

In this list of applications.

C

So also, if you have an existing wordpress site and you want to run it on.net, you just need your content. Folder with the.

A

C

And themes and your like content files like uploaded images and everything in your existing database and you just use all those existing things and connect to them, and in here I will I will use my my correct database host database name database password pointing to my existing mysql with wordpress copy, the content files, and I will have the wordpress on.net uh now in here.

C

I can see the hello dolly plugin from my content file, so I can activate it. It will hit the breakpoint in here.

A

Oh nice, it's awesome.

C

So now I'm running actually through the c sharp in here.

A

And then I'm guessing, for example, my content. I could just put my contents in a content folder or does it have to go in a different folder structure.

C

uh You just keep the same folder structure as it is in wordpress. Oh.

A

Nice, okay, so.

C

We just drag and drop it in here and it's fine. This is actually interesting because now we are in a function called call user, func array, which is a function from php based class library, and you can see it's written in c sharp, so I'm seamlessly debugging my application. Then I'm debugging the pitch by base class library, which is like a class library of the entire language and seamlessly debugging.

C

Debugging, my plugins and everything all together, so this is also the way of separating your plugins from the core of the wordpress and from application, which is, which is a very frequent question of wordpress developers. How to separate my plugin from the actual core of the wordpress, because it requires to have everything into the same folder structure. But we can have it separated into a separate project.

C

Awesome which is, which is pretty cool.

A

And I know another thing that you had mentioned, that is possible is that you could, even not only you, could bring it over your content and your existing plugins, but you could also create new plugins in c. Sharp right is that is that also true, oh yeah,.

C

That's right, that's right! That's uh it's a bit crazy, but you can do it.

A

Do you have a project template for that? I'm guessing.

C

Yes, yes, we could. We have this sample project. This is called peach pie dash wordpress. It also contains this kind of uh this kind of integration.

C

um What I did in here did I edit in here oh yeah in here: let's stop it uh in those in those options I can actually add uh into into a collection called plugin container. I can add my plugins written in dotnet.

A

C

So for this demo we have this dashboard plugin, uh which is an implementation of the interface iwp plugin, and what you do here is actually calling the wordpress api, because all the functions from the php contained in the wordpress core are also available available to the c-sharp. So, for example, if I write here something like wp, this is a class implemented php contained in this nuget package, pitch byte wordpress, and I can use it freely in my chart because it it it gets compiled from the php.

C

So so this is the core core functionality of wordpress now available right in the c sharp and in the same way I can use all the documented apis, that's defined in the wordpress core. I can use it to.

C

To do the same lifecycle things as I'm used to in php, for example in here we are adding the dashboard widget, which has some some arguments.

C

As you can see in here, you can notice I'm calling the php method, but I'm getting the c-sharp intellisense. So this is the kind of integration that we have and we will render a partial razor view right into the output stream.

C

So if I put a breakpoint in here and run the application, you will see that wordpress runs okay, we are in the dashboard and okay, we hit the breakpoint, so we are somewhere uh somewhere. We got called by the wordpress itself and it want us to render the dashboard widget right now.

B

C

So we are rendering the dashboard widget from here, and this is actually the razer pressure partial view defined in here. I already have the the break. So if I step through.

C

I'm now in the razer partial view so from here I just jump into the razor view, I'm rendering the razer view from from the c sharp and then getting back to my php, which results in this nice widget rendered in here. Wow. That's so.

B

C

Rendered in in razer, I can also do whatever I want in c sharp. I can I can write. I can use another components and extensions with my c sharp. If you want to enhance the security of wordpress, you can use the nuget packages that that allows you to set up some security things, some authentication, authorization and stuff. So you can integrate uh your wordpress login screen with uh with some more secure mechanisms that you already have in your in your c-sharp application, and so on.

C

So in this way you can make those words like working together.

A

Nice, what I really like about this experience is when I think about deploying a wordpress application, I think hey. I have these dot php files that are on the server that are essentially like clear text right and now they're. You know they're they're, it's class. I could read it right, but with these now I could build them into dotnet dlls right, so I'm guessing like they're optimized and like again they're, not human, readable dlls.

A

Yes, I feel a little bit safer about like copying them across like different servers and deploying my application in different places. Now.

C

A

C

You can also use some some obfuscations, so you can obfuscate your dlls.

A

C

You can sign them with a strong signature, so it should be harder to modify them all right. We know it's possible, but it should be harder or you can also use visual studio or ms build to publish your application, your wordpress, using the uh using the visual studio or web deployment mechanism. So I can publish my wordpress using those uh dotnet.

A

A

Registries and anything like that, yes,.

C

Everything like this, so it's already there and it's working, because everything is dotnet right.

A

And now I remember in the beginning, like you both mentioned, that you do work for a company, so I'm guessing you have a lot of customers that are doing this that are using wordpress and net together and I'm sure you guys are managing a lot of deployments and those types of things.

A

If it's possible, could you guys talk a little bit about? What's the customer feedback they like for this type of functionality,.

B

Yeah so most of the customers that might use this are in a scenario where they've had a legacy application like wordpress they've, had it for a long time, for example, have their eshop running on it by using some some uh popular plug-in to manage their e-commerce site, or they just have like their entire infrastructure built on this. So their experience is basically like. Okay, we would love to use something more modern, like.net core, but we don't really want to rewrite our entire ecosystem and our whole infrastructure from scratch.

B

So, rather than doing that, they're just taking what what already exists and integrating it seamlessly with dot net and then uh what they often do is they start rewriting small pieces of their original source code in c sharp, for example, and so they can sort of piece by piece start migrating to a new platform. They never have to really rewrite everything from scratch. The whole logic it stays intact, so their experience is basically like okay, so we just take what exists.

B

We migrated, of course, there's always a little bit of work involved in getting this to run it. It very rarely just runs out of the box when you have a large application, tons of plug-ins and themes and whatnot, but we make it work for them, so the custom development is there to fix any of these issues, help them with the development and then, of course, help with the maintenance help with all the updates and if they need to install new plugins or need some custom development afterwards, we can help them with that as well.

A

That's great, that's awesome, yeah. This looks like a fantastic project and just like the just like peach pie itself, I'm guessing you know again, you have the github repo. You have the website, which is peachpie.io where folks can go on and come experiment with things and read the documentation and learn how to get started with some of these activities. Use cases.

B

A

B

Peach pie, io, that's the website. We obviously have a github repo as well, where uh a project in the dot net foundation, so everything is open, source and always will be it's. It's got a very liberal license so feel free to use it. Everything is open source, as as the entire php ecosystem, of course, is open source as well, and we definitely appreciate any feedback and any issues being submitted with questions or problems. We we love any of that. Any contribution send us a pull request.

B

If you think you can do something better or if you can implement something. So we appreciate any involvement from the community.

A

Great awesome: well, hey! Thank you all again for for coming on.

A

um Like this is you know, I haven't built a lot of php applications, but just I know in the ecosystem, there's tons of folks that are asking for it, particularly now that we're in a state that a lot of folks are at home, and so people are wanting to create websites and online stores, and you know, membership websites and all of these types of things- and I think the wordpress ecosystem has a lot of great plugins that could help with that and and and make that on-ramp for them a lot faster and if we get rundown.net and we get the performance of net core, we get the tooling of visual studio and all that type of stuff.

A

As developers now we have. We have like an additional super power now to kind of help push these businesses forward with these kind of capabilities.

B

Yeah, exactly okay.

A

Well, hey! Thank you all here for coming on again, I appreciate it and thank every one of you for watching. This has been another episode of the on.net show where we saw who you can run wordpress on top of.net, using an open source project called.

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