Installer Data Pump

explanation of what the data pump is and how to use it

Created by: xing, Last modification: 05 Sep 2006 (17:21 UTC)

The Pump

During the installation process of bitweaver, there is a page which allows you populate your database with some data. This is called the data pump. as a developer you can utilise this system to populate the database with certain data such as a wiki page or article.

Currently, if you want to have such a data pump present during installation, you need to add a file called pump_<package>_inc.php. These files will automagically be scanned at the time of installation and executed when the user decides to install the extra data.

Since the files are simply include()d you can insert any data you like into the database. For instance, the wiki pump will insert some wiki pages that will allow you view bitweavers wiki package with a sample set of wiki pages. In theory this could be expanded to insert wiki pages with various content formats, wiki books...

For a greater understanding of what this means, please view these files:

Data pump files


<?php
// the file that picks up pump files
install/install_datapump.php

// the wiki pages that get inserted during installation
install/pump_wiki_inc.php
?>


Looking that those files should give you a decent understanding of the system and how it works.

Why install/ ?

The files reside in the install/ directory due to their volatility. The install/ directory should ideally not be accesible during regular operation - just relying on the admin password verification is not really enough... If you point your browser to these files, they will simply execute whatever it says in there. This can potentially lead to a messed up database due to annoying entries.

Proposed Content for the Pump

We need to pick some good pages that have some decent information on them and show off the power of the wiki somewhat to place in the pump. These pages don't necessarily have to be wiki pages but can also be articles, blog posts and other stuff.

Pump Guidelines

  • The included set of pages should be contained within themselves. By that i mean that there should not be any links to wiki pages that are not part of the pump. If there are links to other pages, they should be referenced as external links: [http://www.bitweaver.org/wiki/ReleaseTwo|ReleaseTwo].
  • The pumped pages should be well written and should have some formatting included to illustrate the way the bitweaver wiki works.
  • The content of the pages should either contain useful information or be of a humerous nature. nobody wants to see blah, blah, blah just after a successful installation.

</package>