Backing up and restoring your AppGini database¶

It's crucial for any application in production to have a reliable backup and restore mechanism. AppGini applications come with a built-in feature to back up and restore your database.

Prefer to watch a video tutorial? Check out our Backing up and restoring your AppGini database video on YouTube.

Backing up your AppGini database¶

To back up your AppGini database, follow these steps:

Log in to your AppGini application as an administrator.
Click on the Admin area link in the top menu.
In the Admin area, open the Utilities menu and select Database backups.
On the Database backups page, click the Create Backup File button.
A confirmation dialog will appear, informing you that the application will be set to maintenance mode during the backup process. Click OK to proceed.

Usually the backup process takes only a few seconds, but it may take longer for larger databases. During this time, the application will be in maintenance mode, and users will not be able to access it.
Once the backup is complete, it will be listed under the Available backups section, showing the date, time and size of the backup file.

Restoring your AppGini database¶

To restore your AppGini database from a backup file, follow these steps:

Log in to your AppGini application as an administrator.
Click on the Admin area link in the top menu.
In the Admin area, open the Utilities menu and select Database backups.
On the Database backups page, find the backup file you want to restore from the Available backups section.
Click the Restore button next to the backup file you want to restore.
A confirmation dialog will appear, informing you that the application will be set to maintenance mode during the restore process, and that all data in the current database will be replaced with the data from the backup file. This includes user accounts, settings, and all data in the database. Click OK to proceed.

Restoring a backup takes a few seconds, but it may take longer for larger databases. During this time, the application will be in maintenance mode, and users will not be able to access it.
Once the restore is complete, the application will exit maintenance mode, and you will see a success message indicating that the database has been restored successfully.

Migrating your AppGini application to a new server¶

If you are migrating your AppGini application to a new server, you can use the backup and restore feature to transfer your database. Here’s how:

Create a backup of your AppGini database on the old server by following the steps outlined in the "Backing up your AppGini database" section above.
Download the backup file from the admin/backups directory of your AppGini application on the old server.
- This file will have a .sql extension but would be named as a random string, such as 523f4e5d6b7c8d9e.sql.
- So if you have multiple backups, you can identify the one you want to restore by its date and time.
- If you are using an FTP client, like FileZilla, you can navigate to the admin/backups directory and look for the most recent backup file.
- If you are accessing the server via command line, you can use list the most recent backup file using the following command (assuming you are in the root directory of your AppGini application):
```
ls -lt admin/backups/*.sql | head -n 1
```
Upload the backup file to the admin/backups directory of your AppGini application on the new server.

Make sure that the web server user has write permissions to this directory. If you are using an FTP client, you can set the permissions to 755 or 775 for the admin/backups directory. 4. Log in to your AppGini application on the new server as an administrator. You still need to set up the application and database connection settings on the new server before you can log in. But once you restore the database, you can log in to the application using the same credentials as on the old server. 5. Go to the Admin area and open the Utilities menu, then select Database backups. 6. Find the backup file you uploaded in the Available backups section. 7. Click the Restore button next to the backup file you want to restore. 8. Confirm the restore operation in the dialog that appears, and wait for the process to complete.

Requirements¶

To use the backup feature, your server must have the mysqldump utility installed. This utility is typically included with MySQL installations, so if you have MySQL installed, you likely have mysqldump available.

And to be able to restore a backup, your server must have the mysql command-line client installed. This is also typically included with MySQL installations.

Installing MySQL command-line utilities¶

In some environments, MySQL may be installed on a separate server, and your application server may not have direct access to the MySQL command-line utilities mentioned above. To enable the built-in backup and restore feature to work in such cases, you can install the MySQL command-line utilities on your application server. Assuming you have root access to your server, you can install these utilities using the following commands:

For Debian/Ubuntu-based systems:
```
sudo apt-get install mysql-client
```
For Red Hat/CentOS-based systems:
```
sudo yum install mysql
```
For Windows systems: Download the MySQL Installer from the MySQL website and select the "MySQL Server" and "MySQL Client" components during installation.
For macOS systems: If you have Homebrew installed, you can use the following command:
```
brew install mysql
```

Troubleshooting¶

If you encounter any issues during backup, check the following:

Ensure that the mysqldump utility is installed and accessible from the command line.
Make sure the database credentials in your AppGini application have the necessary permissions to perform backups and restores.
Make sure the web server user has write permissions to the directory where the backup files are stored, which is the admin/backups directory inside your AppGini application directory.
To change the permissions, you can use the following command:
```
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /path/to/your/appgini/application/admin/backups
```

If you're unable to restore a backup, ensure that the backup file is not corrupted and that the backup directory is readable by the web server user.