Find out what version of AtoM you’re running¶

You can always find out what version of AtoM you have installed via the user interface by navigating to Admin > Settings > Global - the application version is the first thing listed on the Settings page. See: Application version for more information.

However, if you’d like to check the application version from the command-line, you can run the following command from AtoM’s root folder:

php symfony tools:get-version

Add a SuperUser (Admin) account¶

You can create a new administrator account from the command-line using the following command:

php symfony tools:add-superuser --email="youremail@example.com" --password="MYSUPERPASSWORD" <username>

The username should not have any spaces in it.

Change a password¶

If you need to change the password on a user account in AtoM, you can do so via the command-line.

php symfony tools:reset-password [--activate] username [password]

The username is a required value, while the password is optional - if no password is entered, AtoM will generate an 8-character temporary password to be used for the user account. AtoM will return the new password in the command-line.

If the user account is currently marked inactive in the system (see Mark a user “Inactive” for more information), you can also use the option --activate to mark that account as active again.

Regenerating derivatives¶

If you are upgrading to AtoM 2 from ICA-AtoM, the digital object derivatives (i.e. the reference display copy and the thumbnail generated by AtoM when a master digital object is uploaded) are set to be a different default size (i.e. they are larger in AtoM) - consequently, after an upgrade, derivatives from ICA-AtoM may appear blurry or pixellated.

As well, sometimes the digitalobject:load task used for importing digital objects to existing descriptions (see: Load digital objects via the command line) won’t generate the thumbnail and reference images properly for digital objects that were loaded (e.g. due to a crash or absence of convert installed, etc. - see under requirements, Other dependencies (not required; recommended)). In this case, you can regenerate these thumbsnail/reference images using the following command:

php symfony digitalobject:regen-derivatives

Re-indexing PDF text¶

php symfony digitalobject:extract-text

In rare situations you may want to to re-index all PDFs to make their text searchable in AtoM without having to re-import them completely. This task will go through each existing PDF imported into AtoM and re-index their contents for searches.

Rebuild the nested set¶

AtoM generally uses a relational database to store its data (we recommend MySQL). However, relational databases, which are comprised of flat tables, are not particularly suited to handling hierarchical data. As developer Mike Hillyer notes, “Hierarchical data has a parent-child relationship that is not naturally represented in a relational database table.” One method of addressing this is to employ a “Nested set model” (Wikipedia). AtoM makes use of a nested set to manage hierarchical relationships, such as between parent and child terms and descriptions.

Sometimes, during operations that involve updates to large hierarchies, the nested set can become corrupted - especially if the server times out during an operation that reaches the execution limit settings. The following task will rebuild all nested sets in AtoM:

php symfony propel:build-nested-set

Generate slugs¶

In some cases, AtoM may time out in the middle of an operation that involves the creation of new records - for example, if a user attempts to import a very large CSV file through the user interface (rather than the command-line - see: CSV import). In such cases, it is possible that AtoM has died after creating an information object, but before having a chance to create a slug for the record. This can cause unexpected errors in the application - most notably, 500 errors when trying to access the records missing slugs through the application interface.

If you want to generate slugs for records in AtoM without them, you can use the following command:

php symfony propel:generate-slugs

Note that existing slugs will not be replaced. If you want to generate new slugs for existing objects, you will need to first delete the existing slugs from the database. This can be useful for records in which a random slug has been automatically assigned, because the default user data used to generate the slug has not been provided (see below for more information on how slugs are generated in AToM).

For information on deleting slugs from AtoM’s database, see below in the section on Common AtoM database queries - particularly, Delete slugs from AtoM.

Taxonomy normalization¶

A command-line tool will run through taxonomy terms, consolidating duplicate terms. If you’ve got two terms named “Vancouver” in the “Places” taxonomy, for example, it will update term references to point to one of the terms and will delete the others.

php symfony taxonomy:normalize [--culture=<culture>] <taxonomy name>

The --culture option on this command-line tool is optional - the default value, if none is entered is en (English). The value you enter for <culture> should be the default culture of the terms you wish to normalize - in most cases this will be the default culture you set up when installing AtoM (though depending on your imports and multi-lingual use of the application, this may not always be true) The value, if needed, should be entered using two-letter ISO 639-1 language code values - for example, “en” for English; “fr” for French, “it” for Italian, etc. See Wikipedia for a full list of ISO 639-1 language codes.

The taxonomy name value should be entered as it is seen in the user interface in Manage > Taxonomies. This value is case sensitive. If the taxonomy name has spaces (i.e. if it is more than one word), you will want to use quotation marks.

Below is an example of running this command on French terms in the Physical object type taxonomy:

php symfony taxonomy:normalize --culture="fr" "Physical object type"

You might also run this command on English terms in the Places taxonomy like so:

php symfony taxonomy:normalize Places

Update the publication status of a description¶

In AtoM, an archival description can have publication status of either “Draft” or “Published”. The publication status of a record, which can be set to either draft or published, determines whether or not the associated description is visible to unauthenticated (i.e., not logged in) users, such as researchers. It can be changed via the user interface in the administration area of a description’s edit page by a user with edit permissions. See Publish an archival description for instructions on changing this via the user interface.

If you would like to change the publication status of a record via the command-line, you can use the following command-line tool, run from the root directory of AtoM. You will need to know the slug of the description whose publication status you wish to update:

php symfony tools:update-publication-status [-f|--force] [-i|--ignore-descendants] [-y|--no-confirm] [-r|--repo] publicationStatusId slug

php symfony tools:update-publication-status 160 example-description

php symfony tools:update-publication-status --force --repo="my-archival-institution" 160 my-description

Delete a description¶

You can delete a description from the command-line if you know the description’s slug. A slug is a word or sequence of words which make up a part of a URL that identifies a page in AtoM. It is the part of the URL located at the end of the URL path and often is indicative of the name or title of the page (e.g.: in www.youratom.com/this-description, the slug is this-description). When a new information object is created in AtoM, the slug for that page is generated based on the title, with spaces, stopwords, and special characters stripped out.

If you know the slug of a description you’d like to delete, use the following command to delete it from the command-line:

php symfony tools:delete-description <slug>

Delete all draft descriptions¶

If you want to remove all draft information object (e.g. archival description) records from AtoM, you can use the following command-line tool to delete all records with a publication status of “Draft”:

php symfony tools:delete-drafts

The task will ask you to confirm the operation:

>> delete-drafts Deleting all information objects marked as draft...
Are you SURE you want to do this (y/n)?

Enter “y” if you are certain you would like to delete all draft records.

Purging all data¶

If you’re working with an AtoM installation and want to, for whatever reason, purge all data you can do this with a command-line tool:

php symfony tools:purge

The tool will prompt you for the title and description of your site as well as for details needed to create a new admin user. If a .gitconfig file is present in your home directory purge will use your name and email, from that file, to provide default values.

Backing up the database¶

To back up a MySQL database, use the following command:

mysqldump -u myusername -p mydbname > ./mybackupfile.sql

Be sure to use your username / password / database name. To restore the database as it was during the dump command, you can suck it back in with this command:

mysql -u myusername -p mydbname < ./mybackupfile.sql

The database is now restored to the point when you dumped it.

Bulk import of XML files¶

While XML files can be imported individually via the user interface (see: Import descriptions and terms), it may be desireable to import multiple XML files, or large files (typically larger than 1 MB) through the command line.

php symfony import:bulk /path/to/my/xmlFolder

Using the import:bulk command¶

By typing php symfony help import:bulk into the command-line without specifying the path to a directory of XML files, you can see the options available on the import:bulk command, as pictured above.

The --application, --env, and connection options should not be used - AtoM requires the uses of the pre-set defaults for symfony to be able to execute the import.

The --index option is used to enable the rebuilding of the search index as part of the import task. When using the user interface to import XML files, the import is indexed automatically - but when running an import via the command-line interface, indexing is disabled by default. This is because indexing during import can be incredibly slow, and the command-line is generally used for larger imports. Generally, we recommend a user simply clear the cache and rebuild the search index following an import - from AtoM’s root directory, run:

php symfony cc & php symfony search:populate

However, if you would like to index the import as it progresses, the --index option can be used to enable this.

The --taxonomy option is only available in AtoM 2.1 and later releases.

The --output option will generate a simple CSV file containing details of the import process, including the time elapsed and memory used during each import. To use the option, you mush specify both a path and a filename for the CSV file to output. For example:

php symfony import:bulk --output="/path/to/output-results.csv" /path/to/my/xmlFolder

The CSV contains 3 columns. The first will simply list a progressive import number (e.g. 1, 2, 3…). The second indicates the time elapsed during the import of that XML file, in seconds, while the third column indicates the memory used during the XML import, in bytes.

The --v option will return a more verbose output as each import is completed. Normally, after the import completes, a summary of the number of files imported, the time elapsed, and the memory used:

Successfully imported [x] XML/CSV files in [y] s. [z] bytes used."

… where [x] is the number of files imported, [y] is a count of the time elapsed in seconds, and [z] is the memory used in bytes.

If the --v command-line option is used (or just -v for short), the task will output summary information for each XML file imported, rather than a total summary. The summary information per file includes file name, time elapsed during import ( in seconds), and its position in the total count of documents to import. For example:

[filename] imported.  [x]s  [y]/[z] total

… where [x] is the time elapsed in seconds, [y] is the current file’s number and [z] is the total number of files to be imported.

Important

In 2.0.1 and earlier releases, the verbose option requires a parameter. We suggest simply entering 1 as the parameter as this has been tested - e.g. --v=1, as in the following example:

php symfony import:bulk --v=1 /path/to/my/importFolder

Note that in 2.1 and later this has been corrected - you can use the flag without a parameter as either --verbose or -v for short. The 2.1 documentation will be updated to reflect this.

Update all draft archival descriptions to published¶

Use this command to publish all draft descriptions in AtoM:

UPDATE status SET status_id=160 WHERE type_id=158 AND object_id <> 1;

Update all draft archival descriptions from a particular repository to published¶

First, retrieve the id of the repository from the slug. In this example, the repository is at http://myatomsite.com/atom/index.php/my-test-repo

SELECT object_id FROM slug WHERE slug='my-test-repo';

Assuming in this example the id returned is 123, you would then execute the following query to perform the publication status updates:

UPDATE status
  SET status_id=160
  WHERE type_id=158 AND status_id=159
  AND object_id IN (
    SELECT id FROM information_object
    WHERE repository_id=123
  );

Don’t forget to rebuild the search index!

php symfony search:populate

Truncate slugs to maximum character length¶

This command will truncate all slugs to a specified maximum character length. In the example below, the character length is 245.

UPDATE slug SET slug = LEFT(slug, 245) WHERE LENGTH(slug) > 245;

Delete slugs from AtoM¶

In some cases, you may wish to replace the existing slugs in AtoM - particularly if they have been randomly generated because the user-supplied data from which the slug is normally derived (e.g. the “Title” field for an archival description) was not entered when the record was created. For more information on how slugs are generated by AtoM, see above, Notes on slugs in AtoM. If you have since supplied the relevant information (e.g. added a title to your archival description), you may want to generate a new slug for it that is more meaningful.

In such a case, you will need to delete the slug in AtoM’s database first - after which you can run the command-line task to generate slugs for those without them (see above, Generate slugs). AtoM slugs are conveniently stored in a table named “slug” - if you know the slug you’d like to delete, you can use the following command to delete it from AtoM’s database (replacing your-slug-here with the slug you’d like to delete):

DELETE FROM slug WHERE slug='your-slug-here';

If you wanted to delete all slugs currently stored in AtoM, you could do so with the following query:

DELETE FROM slug;

You can then use the generate-slugs task to generate new slugs:

php symfony propel:generate-slugs

See above for further documentation on this command-line tool.

Back to the top