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Generating WordPress Theme/Plugin Translation Files with WP-CLI

Generally speaking, task runners like Gulp or Grunt are best for generating translation files on a continuous basis, but what if you need to just generate a quick translation file once? You can easily do so with WP-CLI.

Generating POT Translation Files

To generate a POT translation file for your WordPress plugin or theme, you can use this command:

pagely-wp i18n make-pot wp-content/plugins/my-plugin-dir

Defining a Destination

By default, WP-CLI will place the resulting POT file into the languages/plugin-name.pot. If you want to place it inside a different location, you can define it as an additional option after the source directory like this:

pagely-wp i18n make-pot wp-content/plugins/my-plugin-dir destination/plugin-name.pot

Including Specific Files

What if you want to generate translation strings for only a specific file or set of files? By using the --include option, only those files will be used for generating your POT file.

pagely-wp i18n make-pot . --include"only/scan/this/dir,and/this/file.php"

Simple glob patterns can also be used like in the following example:

pagely-wp i18n make-pot . --include"included-*.php"

Excluding Files

If you want to exclude certain files from being scanned for translation strings, you can provide them by using the --exclude option like this:

pagely-wp i18n make-pot . --exclude="ignored-dir,ignored-file.php"

The --exclude option also has the ability to use simple glob patterns like this:

pagely-wp i18n make-pot . --exclude="ignored-*.php"

The following files are always excluded, unless otherwise included:

  • node_modules
  • vendor
  • .git
  • .svn
  • .CVS
  • .hg
  • *.min.js

Ignoring JavaScript

WP-CLI is able so search through both PHP and JavaScript files for translation strings when generating POT files. This is a great feature, but can sometimes get in the way if your JavaScript is already being processed through a build script.

To ignore JavaScript files when generating POT files, simply use the --skip-js option like this:

pagely-wp i18n make-pot wp-content/plugins/my-plugin-dir --skip-js

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