I have a website which has a lot of files in the /files/ directory, and I would like to move them around so they're a bit more distributed, using FileField Paths. My question is about the retroactive part.

Is the operation asynchronous? I.e. does it use Drupal's nifty asynchronous progress bar as it goes along? What should I back up so if something does go wrong I can restore it? Is there a page that contains more information about the retroactive part?

Sorry for all the questions, I really need to do this on my site but I'm a little nervous about moving thousands of files automatically, so if anyone has any tips or anything that might be of help, please let me know. Thank you!

Comments

deciphered’s picture

deciphered
Primary language English
Location Ballarat, Victoria, Australia
commented
Status: Active » Fixed

Hi SpikeX,

Retroactive Updates leverages Drupals Batch API, which I assume is what you refer to as "Drupal's nifty asynchronous progress bar". It processes all the relevant Nodes in groups allowing it to handle an unlimited amount of nodes without causing any timeout/memory issues.

You would be best to backup both your database and files directory, as if the restore the database after the files have been relocated/renamed, the restored database would no longer point to the files correctly.

Rest assured I have never ran into any issues with the feature, the warning is only a precaution.
Best practice would be to do the Retroactive update on a local development machine, then migrate the files/database to your live site. If migrating the files is unrealistic, at least test on your local development machine, then put your live site offline before running the Retroactive update on the live site.

No there is not further information, but I am in the process of re-writing the module for a 2.x release and documentation is definitely something I intend to improve.

Cheers,
Deciphered.

SpikeX’s picture

SpikeX commented

Thank you very much for the information. :)

Status: Fixed » Closed (fixed)

Automatically closed -- issue fixed for 2 weeks with no activity.