Re: [Phpwiki-talk] Re: Zip meta-data

[Jeff D. <da...@da...>]

In message <Pin...@bo...>,Steve Wai
nstead writes:
>> An Internet-messageish format might work well, for example:
>
>This works for me. While XML would be keen, "don't let the best be the
>enemy of the good." (best=XML, good=simple reliable solution)
>
>Human-readable and human-editable are good things... 

I 'gree.

>One file probably is better... and the mail-message format is simple and
>tried-and-true. NNTP also uses a similar format.


>> Also, what's the thinking about whether we should include all the archived
>> versions of a page (rather than just the most recent) in the ZIP?
>> 
>> I.e.: do we want to be able to:
>>   1) Make a snapshot of the complete state of the database (all versions
>>      of all pages)?
>>   2) Make a snapshot of the current state of the Wiki (most recent version
>>      of all pages)?
>>   3) Have the option to do either 1 or 2?
>
>I suppose in an ideal world, you get a nice wizard box that steps you
>through all the choices for getting a snapshot, from the "whole thing" to
>"just the pages, no metadata." But in a practical sense, the thing that
>concerns me is having a simple way to make backup copies, and a way
>to port from one Wiki to another.

Yes, it would also be nice to use the ZIP archive to move a PhpWiki from one
database format to another.  I'd want to do this without losing archived
versions, so this required a type 1 archive.

I can definitely see the value of a type 2 archive as well.

So I'll proceed towards option 3...

>Anyway, my suggestion is: do the simplest thing first, which in fact
>you've already done since I can make Zip files of PhpWiki.. your choice of
>what comes next! I favor #3 and #2 in that order. Restoring a Wiki should
>work through the InsertPage() interface, so unzipping and loading a Wiki
>would not overwrite existing pages but move them to an archive.

My take is that unzipping a type 2 archive should work as you say.

Unzipping a type 1 archive should wipe the existing database.  This is
probably too dangerous to be done over the web interface.  I envision 
being able to specify a ZIP archive to initialize from  (instead of
pgsrc/*) in wiki_config.  In fact, once the unzip mechanism is in place,
I think we should eliminate pgsrc/* in favor of a pgsrc.zip.


Next question:

What should the structure of a type 1 ZIP archive be?

  1. One file for each version of each page; either in:
    1a. Subdirectories: 'FrontPage/1', 'FrontPage/2', ...
    1b. Funny-named files: 'FontPage~1~', 'FrontPage~2~', ...

  2. One file for each page.  Each file contains all versions of the page.
     If we use the internet message format, this becomes an 'mbox format' file.


>Excellent! You know, CVS has the ability to allow you to develop your own
>private experimental "branch" and tinker away w/o losing the benefits and
>freedom CVS provide. I haven't tried it myself yet but if you used this
>approach, others could check out your work and test it.

Yeah, I know that that's possible.  I'll look into it and see if I can figure
out how.

Jeff