Taking backups

You can backup your app by running:

php artisan backup:run

If you want to backup to a specific disk instead of all disks, run:

php artisan backup:run --only-to-disk=name-of-your-disk

If you only need to backup the db run:

php artisan backup:run --only-db

If you only need to backup the files, and want to skip dumping databases, run:

php artisan backup:run --only-files

##Configuration

##Determining the content of the backup

This is the portion of the configuration that will determine which files and databases will be backed up. Most options should be self explanatory.

//config/laravel-backup.php

    'backup' => [

        /*
         * The name of this application. You can use this name to monitor
         * the backups.
         */
        'name' => env('APP_URL'),

        'source' => [

            'files' => [

                /*
                 * The list of directories that should be part of the backup. You can
                 * specify individual files as well.
                 */
                'include' => [
                    base_path(),
                ],

                /*
                 * These directories will be excluded from the backup.
                 * You can specify individual files as well.
                 */
                'exclude' => [
                    base_path('vendor'),
                    storage_path(),
                ],
                
                /*
                 * Determines if symlinks should be followed.
                 */
                'followLinks' => false,
            ],

            /*
             * The names of the connections to the databases that should be part of the backup.
             * Currently only MySQL-and PostgreSQL-databases are supported.
             */
            'databases' => [
                'mysql'
            ],
        ],

        // ...
    ];

The specified databases will be dumped and, together with the selected files, be zipped. The zipfile will have be named <specified name in configuration>-<YY-MM-DD:His>.zip.

The more files you need to backup, the bigger the zip will become. Make sure there's enough free space on your disk to create the zip. After the zip has beens copied to all destinations it will be deleted.

##Determining the destination of the backup

The backup can be copied to one or more filesystems. This is the part of the configuration where you can specify those destination filesystems.

    'destination' => [

       /*
        * The disk names on which the backups will be stored. 
        */
        'disks' => [
            'local'
        ],
    ],

The default value of config('laravel-backup.destination.filesytems) is an array with only one key: local. If you only use the local disk to take backups and that disk crashes you will have nothing left but tears.

We highly recommend to configure some extra disks in app/config/filesystems.php and adding their names as a destination filesystem for the backup. Those disks should use external servers or services (such as S3).

If something goes wrong copying the zip file to a specific filesystem, we will still try to copy over to all other configured filesystems.

##Getting notified when a backup goes wrong

You can receive a notification when a backup goes wrong. Read the section on notifications to find out more.