[SOLVED] Backup and restore configuration across versions

[Miss Sissy Princess]

Not over-simplifying, but since the OP explicitly titled the thread "across versions" I wanted to address the landscape which has to be covered.

Let's make up a hypothetical "config.txt" file which has a section like this:

Code:

:WiFi:
DHCP: TRUE
SSID: "SpaceMonkey"
Security:  "WPA/WPA2 Personal"
Password: "T0asted0ats"

Any future version of moOde could interpret that section of the config.txt file and fully restore the WiFi settings contained therein.  The same concept would apply throughout.

Note:  The above is meant to illustrate a concept, not serve as a design or a best-practices example.

I rate backing up and restoring moOde as much closer in degree of difficulty to backing up and restoring a Linux desktop system than it is to backing up and restoring a router.

Backing up the settings for the pfSense firewall (based on FreeBSD), another example I gave, is orders of magnitude more difficult than backing up the GUI-accessible settings in moOde.

It would be reasonable to "grow" a feature like this.  Maybe just start with one or two of the four major sections (Library, Audio, Network, or System).  Between Library and Network, there are only about a dozen user-accessible settings that could be backed up or restored (action buttons like "Regenerate" aren't settings one would have to back up.).

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Every version of moOde already reads and writes system configuration files in order to populate the GUI and accept user-entered configuration settings. moOde knows what settings go in which files and in what format they are stored (quoted string, number as text, boolean, etc.). What I am proposing is extending that capability to populate a single configuration settings backup file (rather than the web GUI) and interpreting said file (rather than keyboard input) to import the settings into a new instance of moOde.  

Because these configuration settings backup files would be created by moOde, there would not be a need to do all of the checking one has to do to make sure that (dimwitted) users didn't enter numbers that were out of range, strings with invalid characters, strings that were of the wrong length, null fields, and so forth.  

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Notes:

• This is a "feature request" -- nothing more.
  
• If there isn't an interest in pursuing it, that's fine.
  
• I am not suggesting that the implementation of the feature would be "easy" or that anyone owes it to me to develop, release, and support this feature.
  
• Nothing I have written should be construed as a criticism of the moOde application, for which I am very grateful.