Content from a Moodle backup?
July 4, 2011 11:49 PM Subscribe
Retrieving content from a Moodle backup, without having a Moodle installation?
I have a full site backup, and a lot of unique content I would like to be able to pull out and use elsewhere. Is there any way to do this without doing a Moodle installation?
I was never much of a "power user", and looking at the files I have I cannot even figure out where all my content might be. I have a screenshot here showing the folders that I think are the full site backup, but honestly I am not really sure.
Any ideas or tips?
I have a full site backup, and a lot of unique content I would like to be able to pull out and use elsewhere. Is there any way to do this without doing a Moodle installation?
I was never much of a "power user", and looking at the files I have I cannot even figure out where all my content might be. I have a screenshot here showing the folders that I think are the full site backup, but honestly I am not really sure.
Any ideas or tips?
I'm not familiar with the guts of Moodle, but I think most of the files you see there are your Moodle installation itself, not your content. Text and user-data and such will be in a database backup (do you know what database you were using with Moodle? Probably MySQL? Anyway, the backup is likely to be named something.sql.gz) and uploaded images and files will be in a subdirectory probably called moodledata. Poke around in some of those folders and see. I'd start with the one named "backup" or "moodleback". You might also try this forum.
You should be able to open a .php file in a text editor, but you'll just see the php code intermixed with fragments of HTML. There might be informative comments here and there.
posted by hattifattener at 12:24 AM on July 5, 2011 [1 favorite]
You should be able to open a .php file in a text editor, but you'll just see the php code intermixed with fragments of HTML. There might be informative comments here and there.
posted by hattifattener at 12:24 AM on July 5, 2011 [1 favorite]
You could also install Moodle on a USB drive and use the web interface locally to extract content. But as above, you'll actually need the database - the files you have there appear to be the Moodle frontend rather than your data.
posted by Happy Dave at 2:32 AM on July 5, 2011
posted by Happy Dave at 2:32 AM on July 5, 2011
IIRC, I think most of what you want will be in the "course" subdirectory. Maybe also check "question".
posted by hariya at 2:47 AM on July 5, 2011
posted by hariya at 2:47 AM on July 5, 2011
Hatti above is correct. All uploaded content will be in your moodledata folder - which is usually outside the main web files directory (so it's not accessible from the web). Any text-based data such as course text, names etc. is in the database - probably MySQL.
Take a look here for database info and here for moodledata info.
To be honest, it's probably easier to use a moodle install to do a proper export of your courses - the USB option linked above should work ok, and I expect you can just install to your hard drive and import the database etc.
posted by bullox at 6:23 AM on July 5, 2011
Take a look here for database info and here for moodledata info.
To be honest, it's probably easier to use a moodle install to do a proper export of your courses - the USB option linked above should work ok, and I expect you can just install to your hard drive and import the database etc.
posted by bullox at 6:23 AM on July 5, 2011
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posted by Meatbomb at 11:51 PM on July 4, 2011