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Getting Started

Welcome to Laravel Easy Backups! This guide will walk you through the installation and how to perform your first database backup in just a few minutes.

Installation​

First, install the package via Composer:

composer require aaix/laravel-easy-backups

The package's service provider will be automatically registered. Next, you should publish the configuration file. While the default settings work out-of-the-box for most applications, publishing the config allows you to customize paths and defaults later.

php artisan vendor:publish --provider="Aaix\LaravelEasyBackups\EasyBackupsServiceProvider" --tag="config"

This will create a config/easy-backups.php file in your project.

Setting up your backup command​

This package is designed to be used within a customized, application-specific backup command to give you full control. So we start by creating a new command:

php artisan make:command Backup\\DatabaseBackupCommand

This will create a new command in app/Console/Commands/Backup/DatabaseBackupCommand.php.

Next, we use the package to set up the backup configuration.

<?php

namespace App\Console\Commands\Backup;

use Illuminate\Console\Command;
use Aaix\LaravelEasyBackups\Facades\Backup;

class DatabaseBackupCommand extends Command
{
    protected $signature = 'backup:db:create';

    protected $description = 'Create a database backup';

    public function handle(): int
    {
        $this->info('Creating database backup...');

        // We use the 'database' static method to start a DB backup context
        Backup::database(config('database.default'))
             ->saveTo('local')
             ->compress()
             ->run();

        $this->info('Database backup created successfully.');

        return self::SUCCESS;
    }
}

Let's break down what's happening here:​

  • Backup::database(...): This initiates a new backup process specifically for the given database connection.
  • ->saveTo('local'): This specifies that the backup archive should be saved using the local disk driver, which usually corresponds to your application's storage/app directory.
  • ->compress(): This tells the package to create a compressed .zip (or .tar.gz) archive of the database dump.
  • ->run(): This starts the backup process.

That's it! You've just created your first backup. Now, let's dive deeper into creating and customizing your backups.