build tools for PW

[benbyf]

Hi all,

Not sure if this has been asked already but...

Recently came across an agency with a build script for PW! I was amazed and also bemused, as alot of the script was used to create the right fields and templates in the DB from other local copies, and they'd done this by separating out tens of JSON files with individual field / template export data and sticking it back together on deploy creating new id's adhocly. (a far as i could see as id's were ommited)

Anyway, in my experience I've always felt that export profile and profile installing has worked well for buiding for live as you get a stable install with your site template, fields and pages.

If anyone has any scripting experience with PW I would love to know:

Anyone else use build tools?

What do you use them for with PW?

and what languages/environment you use to create them?

[BitPoet]

That's interesting to read, because it's something I've been thinking quite a bit lately. As I'm working on complex ideas that need templates, fields and pages in their correct places, I'm more and more starting to use individual PW instances to keep things from getting cluttered up, but one day they'll need to be brought together on one system. I definitely won't want to recreate everything by hand, so some kind of export-import functionality will be essential. A lot of that can apparently be done with adrian's ProcessMigrator. I'll have to see how far this gets me, especially with multi-language installations and complex custom field types involved. I'd definitely prefer to build upon an existing module that re-invent the wheel from scratch. If I had to, though, I'd use PHP and PW bootstrapping. No sense introducing foreign tools or languages that may interpret data differently.

[adrian]

A lot of that can apparently be done with adrian's ProcessMigrator. I'll have to see how far this gets me, especially with multi-language installations and complex custom field types involved. I'd definitely prefer to build upon an existing module that re-invent the wheel from scratch. 

Migrator can definitely do this sort of stuff. It hasn't seen much love of late (although I did just commit a quick patch for a bunch of Notices that I had been ignoring - Tracy made them too hard to ignore). Anyway, I still use the module regularly in my own development and rarely have any problems.

I can't imagine working without it when setting up new sections of content for an already live site - just build the fields, templates, and pages in dev and then export/import and you're done. I do always test the import on another dev setup before importing to production as a check.

That said I know there are still some issues to be dealt with. However, I have tested it successfully with a multi-language setup and with all the Profields (except Matrix Repeaters) and normal repeaters.

I still want to get back to sorting out the last of the bugs, but some have been hard to reproduce.

I would be curious to see if it works well for your needs.