ddev

How to call a ddev web command from another one

As answered in ddev exec: command not found (.bash_aliases) shell scripts in .ddev/commands/web are fantastic.

Is it also possible to call a command from another one? Like

#!/bin/bash

# pull prod content to local

dump_remote_database
sync_down_files
import_database

Which would (theoretically) call three separate commands defined in . ddev/commands/web

Currently I get 

/mnt/ddev_config/commands/web/sync_down: line 5: dump_remote_database: command not found
/mnt/ddev_config/commands/web/sync_down: line 6: sync_down_files: command not found
/mnt/ddev_config/commands/web/sync_down: line 7: import_database: command not found
Solution

  • With a host custom command you can call another ddev command, but with a web or other custom command you can't, because they're executing inside the container and don't even know that ddev exists (it lives on the host, on your workstation, and the container does not have access or visibility to it).

    With a host command, for example, ddev relaunch in .ddev/commands/host/relaunch, you could have this, where relaunch calls ddev launch:

    #!/bin/bash

## Description: Launch a browser with URI /user
## Usage: relaunch [path]
## Example: "ddev relaunch"

ddev launch /user

    With a web container command though, you're executing inside the web container (which doesn't even know that ddev exists, it's its own little world). In that case you might have to copy/paste some feature of another web command.

    For example, if you wanted to turn on xdebug in a custom web command, you can't use ddev xdebug because ddev isn't known inside the web container. But you could look at the code of the xdebug command and figure out what to do. You could use the enable_xdebug command inside the web container, just as ddev xdebug on does, you could have a .ddev/commands/web/xdebugon command like this:

    #!/bin/bash

## Description: Enable xdebug inside web container
## Usage: xdebugon
## Example: "ddev xdebugon"

# Do some other things... and ...

enable_xdebug

    It's a trivial example, but the idea is to use the tools that are available to you in the environment you're working with.