❗ Package Depreciated

Please try out hitchcott:app-dump instead

Meteor Backup-Restore

A basic backup solution using mongodump and monogorestore

This package supports Meteor >=0.9, and is experimental.

To install, use meteor add hitchcott:backup-restore

You can also use meteor add hitchcott:backup-restore-ui

to access the {{> backupRestoreControls}} template.

⚠️ For now, don't use this package for anything other than prototyping.

This package currently does not work with projects deployed to meteor.com, as mongodump is disabled on those servers.

Currently, backup files are deleted 1 hour after they are generated and can be accessed by anyone with the download link until then. A more secure mechanism will be implemented shortly.

This package also contains methods that directly manipulate your database, which can be used by any clients out of the box.

Please secure your methods with a package such as hitchcott:method-hooks. Check out the security section for more information.

Please be sure to understand what this package does before using it in production.

What is it?

This package has two functions:

• Backup: Uses mongodump to create a tarball of the application's database then send it to the client via HTTP
• Restore: Allows aforementioned tarball to be uploaded and restored using mongorestore

This provides a simple way of creating backups and restoring your application's database without having to use the mongodb command line tools manually.

If you are using collectionfs, with cfs:gridfs any stored files (such as images) will also be included in the backup file.

Client API

There are two client helpers:

Meteor.downloadBackup will call the downloadBackup method, have the server generate a mongodump, tarball it, create a http endpoint, and automatically redirecting the user to the download link when it is ready.

It wraps Meteor.call('downloadBackup')

Template.myTemplate.events
  'click #download-backup' : ->
    Meteor.downloadBackup()

Meteor.uploadBackup accepts a file object. It reads that file as a binary blob in the browser, and sends it to an uploadBackup method. Once server-side, the tarball is extracted and is used with mongorestore, which will drop the current database and replace it with the uploaded data.

It wraps Meteor.call('uploadBackup')

  'change #upload-backup': (e) ->
     Meteor.uploadBackup e.currentTarget.files[0], ->
        alert 'backup complete!'

Server API

This package should work out of the box with the above client methods. If you want to use them server-side, you can do:

• Meteor.generateMongoDump
• Meteor.parseMongoDump

Check backup-restore.coffee for more information.

Security

You shouldn't use this pacakge for anything other than prototyping without securing the methods on the server side.

To do so, you could use the hitchcott:method-hooks package.

For example:

Meteor.beforeMethods ['uploadBackup', 'downloadBackup'], ->
  Meteor.users.findOne(@userId)?.admin

The above will ensure that only users with the admin field attached to their user (server side mongo) object can perform backups and restores.

Todos (PRs welcome)

• Make download route more secure
• Make TEMP_LIFETIME configurable
• Direct upload of tar via HTTP instead of using FileReader on client (I believe this will be required larger backup files).
• Deeper collectionfs integration
  • serving backup/restore files
  • backing up local filesystem files
• Better docs
• Tests

Credits

Chris Hithcoct, 2014

MIT License