[development] Staging content to production servers

[Jeremy Epstein]

The Import / Export API will certainly be a great tool for migrating
data from a staging environment to a prod environment. The API
supports any data that is stored in the DB: that is, not just the
usual nodes / users / comments / categories, but also variables (i.e.
config settings), system files, block configuration, and anything else
you can think of. As long as there's a definition available for the
data structure, it can be exported / imported.

There currently isn't support for properly exporting / importing
serialized data, but adding support is simply a matter of defining
'serialized' as a new field type in the API.

Cheers,
Jaza.

On 6/16/06, Khalid B <kb at 2bits.com> wrote:
> > Alan -- thanks for this write up. I think the staging/production
> > server issue is one that merits attention. A lot of times, it means
> > we're running without a safety net -- it is too hard to merge
> > (config, content) changes between a dev site and a live site...so
> > lots of people just don't, or do extra work in re-doing the same
> > config steps on a live site.
>
> Boris/Alan
>
> I have had clients ask me on this as well. The idea is to have a production
> server than no one posts content to directly, and a staging server where
> content is posted, edited, refined, ..etc. Then a button is clicked to push
> selected content from the staging to the production.
>
> Perhaps a starting point would be something similar to the Node Import/Export
> that Jeremy Epstein is writing as part of SoC.
>
> If this is coupled with:
>
> a) an API that modules can use to push/pull their own data along with
> what core does.
>
> b) an XML RPC or some other protocol for sending the data from one
> server to the other.
>
> c) Users and roles as well.
>
> d) all of the above is configurable (push content only, content + comments,
> users only, user + roles, all the above)
>
> If this happens, we can have truly federated servers and other neat things.
> For example, this can be the solution for sharing of users and roles across
> sites. If the sites are multi site on the same physical server, or across the
> globe, it will still work.
>
> Just some thoughts.
>