Managing WordPress Comments with WP-CLI – [Pagely® SupportOps]

WordPress makes managing comments easy to do when logged into the WordPress admin, but what if you want to manage your comments using a command line interface? In this article, we'll show you how to manage comments within your WordPress site using WP-CLI.

Showing All Comments

Using WP-CLI, you can easily list all comments on your WordPress site. Simply navigate to your site's root directory and use the following command:

pagely-wp comment list

Showing All Comments for a Specific Post

If you have a lot of comments, you're probably better off with only showing comments for a specific post. To do so, you can use the --post_id argument like this:

pagely-wp comment list --post_id=123

Changing the Comment List Fields

If you need to further filter your comment listing to only include specific fields, you can use the --fields argument, followed by a comma-separated list of fields that you want to show.

pagely-wp comment list --fields=comment_ID,comment_post_ID,comment_content

When filtering by fields, these comment fields are available:

comment_ID: The comment ID.
comment_post_ID: The ID of the post that the comment is associated with.
comment_date: The date/time of the comment.
comment_approved: If the comment has been approved.
comment_author: The comment author.
comment_author_email: The comment author's email.

The following fields may also be available, depending on the particular comment:

comment_author_url: The comment author's URL.
comment_author_IP: The comment author's IP.
comment_date_gmt: The date/time of the comment in GMT.
comment_content: The content of the comment.
comment_karma: The karma associated with the comment. Usually used by anti-spam plugins like Akismet.
comment_agent: The user agent of the author when the comment was posted.
comment_type: The type of comment that was posted (comment, trackback, pingback).
comment_parent: The comment parent, if the comment is a reply to another comment.
user_id: The comment author's user ID, if the author is a registered user.
url: The comment's URL where it can be viewed.

Getting a Single Comment

The get information about an individual comment, you can use the following command, replacing 123 with your comment ID:

pagely-wp comment get 123

Approving/Unapproving Comments

Approving a Comment

Need to approve a comment? Just grab the comment ID and use the following command from within your WordPress site's root directory:

pagely-wp comment approve 123

Unapproving a Comment

Here's how to unapprove a comment that has already been approved:

pagely-wp comment unapprove 123

Marking a Comment as Spam

If you want to mark a comment as spam, just grab the comment ID and use the following command from within your WordPress site's root directory:

pagely-wp comment spam 123

Trashing Comments

To move a comment to the trash, use the comment's ID within the following command:

pagely-wp comment trash 123

Permanently Deleting Comments

The permanently delete a comment without first placing it into the trash, you can issue the following WP-CLI command:

pagely-wp comment delete 123

Updating Comments

When updating comments with WP-CLI, you'll need to add arguments containing your updated information. Here's a list of the available fields:

comment_ID: The comment ID.
comment_post_ID: The ID of the post that the comment is associated with.
comment_date: The date/time of the comment.
comment_approved: If the comment has been approved.
comment_author: The comment author.
comment_author_email: The comment author's email.
comment_author_url: The comment author's URL.
comment_author_IP: The comment author's IP.
comment_date_gmt: The date/time of the comment in GMT.
comment_content: The content of the comment.
comment_karma: The karma associated with the comment. Usually used by anti-spam plugins like Akismet.
comment_agent: The user agent of the author when the comment was posted.
comment_type: The type of comment that was posted (comment, trackback, pingback).
comment_parent: The comment parent, if the comment is a reply to another comment.
user_id: The comment author's user ID, if the author is a registered user.
url: The comment's URL where it can be viewed.

For example, if you wanted to update the content for the comment with ID 123 to display "Updated comment content", you would use the following command:

pagely-wp comment update 123 --comment_content='Updated comment content'