Conveyor

Synopsis

Conveyor provides a way to push and synchronize content and configuration from one environment to another. This tackles a common problem that content cannot be migrated across different drupal instances (e.g test, staging, production).

In the easiest setup with 2 drupal instances, there's a sending end (origin) and a receiving end (destination). The destination has to be set up with a REST service using the Services module. On the sending end the credentials of the origin Drupal instance have to be configured, such as the url, endpoint, user login and password.

On the origin environment every node is provided with a 'push' tab. If you click it, that node is pushed to any of the endpoints you choose (in this case, 1). Nodes are given a unique identifier using the UUID module and are synchronized when pushing a given node multiple times.

Requirements

• UUID
• Services 3 and the rest_server submodule
• Entity

Known problems

As for now, the conveyor module doesn't cover everything. I'm currently refactoring less-presentable code into coding standards and best practices. A bit lower on this page there's a list of priorities that have proved to work well on a production site.

Installation

Conveyor has to be installed and enabled on each website. Once all the dependencies are installed, create a new service on the receiving end in admin/structure/services. Choose REST and name it whatever you want. Once saved, enable the following settings for that service:

Tab: Server

Response formatters: json
Request parsing: all options

Tab: Resources

Check the conveyor_config tickbox.
Check the conveyor_node tickbox.
Check the user tickbox.

Finally, go to the module administration page (admin/config/system/conveyor) and check any field you want to import. Select the environment you want to push it to, and click 'Save'. Note, not all the fields are implemented yet.

Priorities:

Conveyor is still under active development. Usage in production environments is highly discouraged.

• DONE - Pushing and syncing nodes and base fields
• DONE - Logging in as predefined user
• DONE - Syncing conveyor export settings
• Provide support for all major custom fields
• Syncing content types
• Syncing taxonomy vocabularies
• Syncing panels
• Exporting & syncing views
• Pushing system settings forms
• Pushing custom variables

Advantages:

• Minimum amount of setup (no, that doesn't mean NO setup ;-)
• Customization possible (choose which fields/types to push)
• RESTful integration (with services module)
• Unicorns! Rainbows!