Akeeba Backup for WordPress

Thursday, 02 October 2014 22:42 CDT

veeco

Hello, i'm still doing a lot of SQL for non serialized array data in order to updating path from local to live site:
1. does your scan for plain SQL before imported ?
2. Is it support for 3rd party plugin as well (non serialized array) ?
3. Any custom post-SQL queries in AkeebaBackup for WP ?
4. is it suppport for custom prefix rather than 'wp_' ?

Thanks

Friday, 03 October 2014 06:49 CDT

nicholas

Hello Viktor,

1. I am not sure what you mean? If you're asking if you can take the .sql, .s01 etc files generated during backup and import them with phpMyAdmin or similar, no. The table prefix is replaced with a hash sign followed by two underscores. This allows you to restore using a different table prefix, e.g. change the table prefix from wp_ to abcd_ during restoration.

2. No. Absolute URLs in third party tables cannot be managed. We could do a blind search & replace but it could cause considerable issues depending on the data format the third party plugin expects.

3. No, there's no support for that in Akeeba Backup. You can, however, modify the files under installation/sql after you extract the archive and insert your custom SQL there. What is the use case you have in mind?

4. Yes, of course. See #1 :)

Regarding serialised data, if you could please give us the names of the plugins you are using we could add support for serialised data in a future version. We have an idea in mind but if we can't test it we can't release it. Please help us help you.

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

🇬🇷Greek: native 🇬🇧English: excellent 🇫🇷French: basic • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

Friday, 03 October 2014 15:11 CDT

veeco

this is my third time writing reply.. something wrong the app ? because i already write long answer.. but everytime i press the 'reply' button, the progress bar stuck at 100% and my reply is not saved

Edited by veeco on 2014-10-03 15:14 CDT

Friday, 03 October 2014 15:15 CDT

veeco

please see the attachment for detail.. i can't type here as the progress bar is stuck at 100% everytime i hit reply button

Monday, 06 October 2014 01:15 CDT

nicholas

Hello Viktor,

Regarding your reply, I suppose you are using Safari? For some reason Safari needs to expire Joomla!'s login cookie after a very short amount of time (1-5 minutes), despite the cookie having an expiration time much further in the future. I don't know why, I have the same problem when using Safari after the update to Joomla! 3.3.6. We are planning on adding Joomla!'s "Keep Alive" code in the front-end to see if it helps.

Regarding your two feature requests, we'll be working on them but it will take a while for us to come back with tested code – especially since we are completely swamped at the moment. My plan for the implementation is:

- Custom SQL: Allow you to specify a file, stored in a specific location of your site, to be appended to the database SQL dump when taking a backup. Therefore these commands will run after ANGIE has restored your database.

- Serialised data: Replace serialised data in known core WordPress tables

In the meantime I believe you can use Search Replace DB after restoration. If that doesn't work it's pretty safe to say that our solution won't work either...

Now, another question. When we have these features ready, around November, would you like me to contact you for pre-release testing?

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

🇬🇷Greek: native 🇬🇧English: excellent 🇫🇷French: basic • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

Tuesday, 07 October 2014 09:35 CDT

nicholas

I am reviewing all of the plugins you have told me about. I don't see any of them storing the absolute URL to the site in the serialised data. As such their settings don't need to be changed when restoring to a new location.

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

🇬🇷Greek: native 🇬🇧English: excellent 🇫🇷French: basic • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

Tuesday, 07 October 2014 21:31 CDT

veeco

@nicholas thanks for your reply...
if you need, i can give you my .jpa and you can check yourself... there are several plugin use serialized array.. the core one that i believe use serialized array is widget... try to add "text" widget and enter an absolute URL... they're stored in serialized array...

Wednesday, 08 October 2014 10:43 CDT

nicholas

Thank you very much for the feedback! Today I was working on the serialised data fixer and it seems promising. I found a way to fix any kind of serialised data without ugly and potentially dangerous regular expressions. In fact, it's such a simple solution that made me wonder how come none of the other developers in the WordPress community have come up with it yet.

Now I am building a handy interface for doing replacements after the database restoration is complete. I want to allow you to perform basic and custom replacements in serialised and non-serialised data of core WordPress and custom tables. My intention is to pretty much replicate the functionality of Search Replace DB with more automation and without the risk of screwing up your database. It's not that hard, it just takes some time to write a proper solution that's also intuitive to use.

I'll get back to you when I have a working version (it'll take a while).

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

🇬🇷Greek: native 🇬🇧English: excellent 🇫🇷French: basic • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

Tuesday, 14 October 2014 05:34 CDT

nicholas

Hello Viktor,

I have good news. I added a new step in the ANGIE installer for WordPress sites called "Data replace". By default, it will replace the absolute and relative URL of your old site with the respective values for the newly restored site in the core WordPress tables, both in plain text and serialised data format.

On top of that, you can add more replacement pairs (from/to) and/or select additional tables (other than WordPress core tables) where to do these replacements. Our replacement code is able to understand if a field contains serialised or plain text data automatically. Moreover, it has 100% accuracy in replacing values in serialised data WITHOUT the risk of damaging it. Unlike the other WordPress developers who use regular expressions of questionable utility we have written our own tokeniser for serialised data, ensuring that the data is never, ever compromised as the result of a replacement process. Moreover, unlike the other WordPress developers who try to do everything in one page load, our code is based on the same engine as the database backup code, meaning that the replacement can take place on tables of an arbitrary size without timing out.

We plan on releasing a new version of our software towards the end of the month after some additional testing.

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

🇬🇷Greek: native 🇬🇧English: excellent 🇫🇷French: basic • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

Tuesday, 14 October 2014 06:21 CDT

veeco

Woohoooo ! that's what i call awesomeness.. Setting up new site can take up to 1 hours... just to resave all the serialized array and testing the frontpage one by one... hopefully it will become few minutes with new release

Tuesday, 14 October 2014 06:27 CDT

nicholas

It should be seconds, not minutes :)

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

🇬🇷Greek: native 🇬🇧English: excellent 🇫🇷French: basic • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

Friday, 31 October 2014 09:29 CDT

veeco

Hi nicholas, i wondering if there's update on this issue... updating urls can be a headache...

Friday, 31 October 2014 11:27 CDT

nicholas

The final release will probably take a while. In the meantime please try using our dev release from https://www.akeebabackup.com/download/developer-releases/solo-standalone-dev.html

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

🇬🇷Greek: native 🇬🇧English: excellent 🇫🇷French: basic • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

Sunday, 30 November 2014 17:20 CST

System Task

system

This ticket has been automatically closed. All tickets which have been inactive for a long time are automatically closed. If you believe that this ticket was closed in error, please contact us.

Edited by on 2014-11-30 17:20 CST

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