A couple of weeks ago I delivered a webinar on how to manage the process of moving Drupal websites from development to staging and production. The presentation gives an overview of the process including a few key points for the key pieces. Here are the key points:
- Manage sites in code (keep configuration and updates in code)
- Have an effective version control system
- Test, test and run more Tests
In the presentation I covered a pair of scripts that form the basis of creating a scrubbed database for use on development machines. This is a good practice for several reasons including making sure that a development server doesn't send emails or data to Google Analytics for example.
The first piece is a shell script like this:
#!/bin/bash
# Use as ./sql_scrub_dump.sh local_db_user local_db_pass dump_file.gz
# Creates a scrubbed version of a database dump using the local database defined below as the intermediary.
# note: the dump file will be gzip compressed, as will te resulting file.
local_db=6000_temp_scrub
function db_query() {
sql=${1}
mysql -u${local_user} -p${local_pass} -e "$sql" ${local_db}
}
local_user=${1}
local_pass=${2}
dump_file=${3}
new_dump_file=scrubbed-${3}
mysql -u${1} -p${2} -e "DROP DATABASE IF EXISTS $local_db"
mysql -u${1} -p${2} -e "CREATE DATABASE $local_db"
gunzip -c $dump_file | mysql -u${1} -p${2} $local_db
mysql -u${1} -p${2} $local_db < scrub.sql
mysql -u${1} -p${2} $local_db < live_to_dev_scrub.sql
# Here we make sure that all the tables are InnoDB.
mysql -u${1} -p${2} -e "SHOW TABLES" $local_db \
| grep --invert-match '^Tables' \
| sed -e 's/\(.*\)/ALTER TABLE `\1` ENGINE = innodb;/' \
| mysql -u${1} -p${2} $local_db
# Dump the scrubbed version and drop the temporary DB.
mysqldump -u${1} -p${2} $local_db | gzip > $new_dump_file
mysql -u${1} -p${2} -e "DROP DATABASE IF EXISTS $local_db"
If you look through what this shell script does it dumps a copy of the database and creates a new database from that dump. In the new, temporary, copy of the database transformations are performed to clean up the data. The cleaning actually happens in this line:
Kids are great at reminding us that it is the simple things in life that bring joy.
Thanksgiving is past and Christmas is just a few weeks away which means Las Vegas turns into the city of the 
This past weekend was the annual American celebration of the Thanksgiving holiday. I was quite fortunate to spend the early part of last week with a recent immigrant celebrating their first Thanksgiving. Seeing this uniquely American holiday through fresh eyes was a wonderful experience. The weekend also provided a break to think about the fantastic opportunities and experiences that brought us so far.
