JBackup

Table of Contents

• JBackup
• Definitions
• Installation
  • Source Install
• Usage

A Python-based extendable backup system.

This system was developed for the purpose of automating backups for all of my projects. The core of the system are actions and rules.

Actions are scripts that provide a generic interface to do something; for example, a script to compress a directory into an archive. Rules are config files which provide arguments to the action; with the same example, a path to the directory to compress.

Action properties are defined in an action, and rules provide values for them.

Definitions

Action
A Python script containing a class used to implement a behavior. Actions are loaded as modules and their class is extracted. An instance of that class is used to run the action. Actions have properties, which are covered below.

Action Property
A variable defined by an action — it has a name and a value. Actions use rules to provide values for their properties.

Data Path
The path in which actions and rules will be created. The path is selected based on user permissions: if the user has root privileges, the path is /usr/local/etc/jbackup; for everyone else, the path is ~/.local/etc/jbackup.

Rule
A config file that provides values for the action.

Installation

You can install jbackup with pip:

pip3 install git+https://github.com/JohnDevlopment/jbackup.git

Source Install

Download an archive or clone this repository and head into the root directory. Install the dependencies listed in requirements.txt.

pip3 install -r requirements.txt

Install the build package for Python with this command:

pip3 install build

Build the project using this command:

python3 -m build

Now install from either the tar archive or the wheel:

# Install from a wheel
pip3 install dist/jbackup-<version>-py3-none-any.whl

# Install using the source distribution
pip3 install dist/jbackup-<version>.tar.gz

It is recommended that you install from the wheel. Otherwise, you can install from the source distribution. <version> is replaced with the project version.

Usage

JBackup can be used with the commandline utility jbackup. It has several subcommands:

• complete
• create-action
• create-rule
• do
• locate
• show

Action Creation

In order to start using JBackup, create an action:

jbackup create-action <action>

<action> is the name of the action you want to create. A Python script named <action>.py (with the <action> replaced, of course) is created under the actions subdirectory in the current data path.¹

The newly created file is based off of a template, which you can find in templates/_template.py under the directory where the package is installed.

Rule Creation

Next, create a rule with this command:

jbackup create-rule <rule>

This creates a rule with the given name under the rules subdirectory of the current data path.¹

Rules are currently in TOML format, though this can be changed with the -f option. That being said, TOML is the only format supported right now.

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1 Check the definition above.