The Zotonic shell command

The zotonic command runs a number of utility commands which all operate on a Zotonic instance.

The zotonic command lives in the bin/ folder of the Zotonic source. Putting this path into your PATH variable makes working with Zotonic a lot easier:

export PATH=$HOME/zotonic/bin:$PATH

The command determines where the Zotonic base dir is by looking at its path; it always assumes that its zotonic basedir is one dir up from where the binary itself is.

Currently, the following subcommands are implemented:

zotonic start

Start the background Zotonic server instance.

zotonic stop

Stop the background Zotonic server instance.

zotonic debug

Launch the Zotonic server interactively and get an EShell on the running instance. There is a “start.sh” command in the root folder which is a shortcut for this command.

zotonic restart

Restart the background Zotonic server instance.

zotonic update

Update the server. Compiles and loads any new code, flushes caches and rescans all modules.

zotonic addsite [options] <site_name>

Create a new site with [site_name] as its name. This new site will be based on a so-called skeleton site. Currently there are two skeletons: ‘blog’ and ‘empty’. “blog” is the default.

zotonic addsite -s empty yoursite

creates a new site called “yoursite” based on the skeleton called “empty”. It has the following options:

-s <skel>	Skeleton site (‘blog’ or ‘empty’; default: blog)
-h <host>	Database host (default: 127.0.0.1)
-p <port>	Database port (default: 5432)
-u <user>	Database user (default: zotonic)
-P <pass>	Database password (default: zotonic)
-d <name>	Database name (default: zotonic)
-n <schema>	Database schema (default: public)
-a <pass>	Admin password (default: admin)
-L	Create the site in the current directory instead of in zotonic/priv/sites.

The “addsite” subcommand checks a file called $HOME/.zotonic-defaults for the default values to these options. This file is a file in bash-syntax which can define the following variables: SKEL, DBHOST, DBPORT, DBUSER, DBPASSWORD, DBDATABASE, DBSCHEMA, ADMINPASSWORD, DO_LINK.

zotonic installmodule <module_name>

Installs a module from the modules.zotonic.com repository into your Zotonic instance. The module will be checked out using source control (either git or hg) into the priv/modules folder:

~$ zotonic installmodule mod_openid
Getting module index
** Installing mod_openid ...
requesting all changes
adding changesets
adding manifests
adding file changes
added 11 changesets with 21 changes to 15 files
updating to branch default
14 files updated, 0 files merged, 0 files removed, 0 files unresolved
** mod_openid OK

zotonic copysite [site_name] [source_server]

Copy [site_name] and its database content from the [source_server] over SSH and load its content into the filesystem and database of the local machine. You will need to have created the database zotonic_[site_name] for this to work.

Warning: This command will reset the content of the database to the content retrieved from the [source_server]. It does, however, generate and output a restore file in case this was run by accident and explains how to recover.

zotonic createdb [site_name]

Create a database called zotonic_[site_name] with the basic setup in place to host a Zotonic datastore. This script will likely need to be run as postgres unless zotonic has been granted CREATEDB in postgres as follows:

ALTER ROLE zotonic WITH CREATEDB

zotonic sitedir [site_name]

Get the absolute path for a site based on [site_name]

zotonic snapshot [site_name]

Take a version control snapshot of [site_name] including its database content.

This works differently from mod_backup in that it consistently uses the same filename for the SQL backup to make revision-based full site rollbacks possible.

zotonic update

Update the server. Compiles and loads any new code, flushes caches and rescans all modules.

zotonic compilefile [files...]

Compiles and reloads a single Erlang module within the Zotonic folder. This runs very fast and works very well on a save-hook of your text editor. In Emacs, it would be called like this:

(add-hook 'erlang-mode-hook
      '(lambda ()
         (add-hook 'after-save-hook '
                   (lambda ()
                     (call-process "/path/to/your/bin/zotonic" nil "*scratch*" nil "compilefile" buffer-file-name)
                     )
                   )
         ))

Legacy zotonic.sh script

For archival purposes, the zotonic.sh script that was used before release 0.8 is listed here.

#!/bin/bash
#
# Copyright 2009 Marc Worrell
#
# Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
# you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
# You may obtain a copy of the License at
# 
#     http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
# 
# Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
# distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
# WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
# See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
# limitations under the License.
 
##
## usage zotonic.sh {debug|start|stop|restart}
##
## Use "debug" to start an interactive shell (highly recommended when installing the db on the first run).
## Use "start" in production. This boots zotonic in an erlang vm with a heart beat process.
##
## The proposed directory structure is:
## /home/zotonic/zotonic.sh                         -- this script
## /home/zotonic/zotonic/...                        -- the zotonic code
## /home/zotonic/zotonic/priv/sites/default/...     -- your site and uploaded files go here

# Change this to your base directory
BASE=/home/zotonic

# Change this to the complete path to zotonic.sh (this script)
ZOTONIC_SH=$BASE/zotonic.sh

# Change this to the directory where you have unpacked zotonic
# IMPORTANT: this directory must be called zotonic or zotonic-x.y where x.y is the version number.
ZOTONIC=$BASE/zotonic

# Change this to point to the erlang vm
ERL="/usr/local/bin/erl"

# The include path for the erlang vm, add when needed for your application.
PA="$ZOTONIC/ebin $ZOTONIC/deps/*/ebin $ZOTONIC/modules/*/deps/*/ebin $ZOTONIC/priv/modules/*/deps/*/ebin $ZOTONIC/priv/sites/*/modules/*/deps/*/ebin"

# The name of the Erlang node, this must be unique on your host.
SNAME=zotonic001

# Set the hostname to the fully qualified domain name of your host, or leave it as localhost.
# HOSTNAME=`hostname`
# HOSTNAME=your.domain.com
HOSTNAME=localhost

# The command used to restart zotonic when crashed, only used after a "zotonic.sh start"
export HEART_COMMAND="$ZOTONIC_SH start"

## The port and IP address zotonic will bind to (defaults to all ip addresses and port 8000)
export ZOTONIC_IP=any
export ZOTONIC_PORT=8000

# The filename where zotonic writes its unix process Id to, for monitoring applications.
export ZOTONIC_PIDFILE=$BASE/zotonic.pid

pushd $ZOTONIC >/dev/null


function start() {
    echo  "Starting zotonic $SNAME"
    make -C $ZOTONIC >/dev/null
    $ERL -pa $PA -name $SNAME@$HOSTNAME -boot start_sasl -heart -detached -s zotonic
}

function stop() {
    echo "Stopping zotonic $SNAME"
    $ERL -noshell -pa $PA -sname ${SNAME}_stop -s zotonic stop $SNAME@$HOSTNAME
}

function update() {
    echo "Updating zotonic $SNAME"
    $ERL -noshell -pa $PA -sname ${SNAME}_stop -s zotonic update $SNAME@$HOSTNAME
}


case $1 in

  start)
    start
    ;;
 
  debug)
    $ERL +P 10000000 +K true -pa $PA -name $SNAME@$HOSTNAME -boot start_sasl -s zotonic
    ;;
 
  stop)
    stop
    ;;
 
  update)
    update
    ;;

  shell)
    $ERL -sname zotonic_shell -remsh $SNAME@$HOSTNAME
    ;;

  restart)
    echo "Restarting zotonic"
    stop
    start
    ;;

  *)
    echo "Usage: $0 {debug|start|stop|restart|update}"
    exit 1
esac

popd > /dev/null
 
exit 0