Cannot bulk import media

[crtl]

Bug Report

I have around 2.6k images in a subdirectory inside wp-content/uploads/product_images.
I tried to import them but get the following error:

$ wp media import ./product_images/*.png --skip-copy
/.../Composer/vendor/wp-cli/wp-cli/bin/wp: line 45: /c/xampp/php/php: Argument list too long
/.../Composer/vendor/wp-cli/wp-cli/bin/wp: line 45: /c/xampp/php/php: No error

The command evaluates the blob and just appends all files as arguments for the php command which seems to be too long for php to handle.

[schlessera]

@crtl The ./product_images/*.png bit in your command is already expanded by your shell in this case. The shell will expand this while examining the filesystem and then pass on a file list that matches this pattern to the actual tool being called, like so:

$ wp media import ./product_images/image1.png ./product_images/image2.png ./product_images/image3.png ... --skip-copy

So there's nothing that WP-CLI can do here, as the problem already occurs before you're even hitting the WP-CLI tool.

However, I notice now that the documentation says the command would support glob capabilities, which doesn't seem to be the case as far as I can see from the source code. If that would be the case, you could provide the "unglobbed" string to wp media import by quoting it, which I don't think works right now:

wp media import './products_images/*.png' --skip-copy

So a solution to this problem would be to add actual globbing support to the command and then handling the expansion within PHP memory.

[crtl]

The solution would be to support passing directory names and a recursive option to the command.

[schlessera]

Directory names are not precise enough for this. Actual globbing would be preferable, and PHP already supports this out of the box, so it'd be easier to implement as well.

[crtl]

How can you decide whats precise and what not.
The command is pretty useless if you can only upload a limited amount of images because for small amounts you can just use the normal media upload in the admin dashboard.

[schlessera]

The goal is to make this more useful by allowing you to control what to include at the WP-CLI level, instead of relying on the shell.

But adding folders and a recursive option is both more complicated and less flexible than just passing the provided argument through the PHP glob() function.

[bgoewert]

Was getting an error while attempting to bulk import.
Warning: Unable to import file 'images/*.webp'. Reason: File doesn't exist.

Then I realized that I had the path in quotes. The docs show an example for bulk imports with an unquoted path. Removing the quotes fixed the issue.

It's not a huge deal, but I was expecting the string path to work too.

Any update on this?

[swissspidy]

Took a stab at this in #226 but IMO it's too confusing to have two competing glob solutions. Given the lack of traction I am going to close this as wontfix/maybelater.