Merge orchard content from development and production databases

Question

I`m looking for a solution to a following problem. We have orchard site on production environment developed some time ago. All site structure (widgets, parts, layers) was created before initial release. Now we want to add sub site with additional pages and layers. We want to do this work on development environment and test it before release (on top of recent production database snapshot). At the same time on production environment new minor content would be added. So question is – is there solution to merge changes from one orchard database (development one) to other one (production)? Those changes include layers, custom widgets and parts.

Altdorfer

Answer 1

The Orchard Import Export Module may help you. It lets you export data from one Orchard instance and import it into another. All the modules you use need to have extra code in them to support this.

This won't help you with merging though if you plan to make db changes in both live and test, but it might be a step in the right direction.

For an example of import/export support look at the Importing and Exporting methods in a driver for one of the Orchard core modules like Tags.

Albrecht

As the Import Export module exports content as XML, comparing the exported files with a file comparison tool like WinDiff might be a quick way to identify new content items on either site. You could then construct a new recipe from the changes and import that into the target site (or do it once in each direction to generate a file of changes for the development site, and a file of changes for the live site). – Selfpreservation