18. Command-line interfaces (CLI)¶
Command-line interfaces (CLI) allow advanced users to interact with Mahara through the command line or terminal rather than through a graphical interface. That can speed up certain actions or make them easier to execute.
Notitie
You can view help information on the individual commands that are available for each script:
sudo -u www-data php htdocs/admin/cli/[file name of the script].php -h
18.1. Delete certain groups in bulk¶
If you have a large site and deleted a lot of users, you may also wish to clean up old groups in an efficient way. You can do the following with the bulk group deletion script:
delete all groups that have no members, e.g. after users were deleted;
and delete all groups that have only site administrators as members;
and / or delete only groups associated with a certain institution.
Execute the script with the following command. A dry run is made by default so that no data is deleted by accident.
sudo -u www-data php htdocs/admin/cli/delete_inactive_groups.php
18.2. Delete certain users in bulk¶
If you want to delete users in bulk from the site without needing to go to the administration screen, especially if you have more than 500 users to delete, you can use CLI. This script allows you to do the following:
delete all users that have never logged in, i.e. that were created manually, via CSV file, or an automated process;
and / or delete all users that have not logged in since a certain date;
and / or delete only those users from a specific institution;
delete users that are members of a specific group.
Execute the script with the following command. A dry run is made by default so that no data is deleted by accident.
sudo -u www-data php htdocs/admin/cli/delete_inactive_users.php
18.3. Index sites running Elasticsearch faster¶
Notitie
Prerequisite: Elasticsearch is installed and set up to run on the site.
When a large site is indexed or re-indexed so that Elasticsearch can display results, this process can take a very long time because the indexing happens on cron runs. If the batch that was indexed finished before the end of the cron though, there is a lag between the next batch starting up again. The fast_index CLI script starts the next batch indexing right after the previous one finished.
You run the script with the following command:
sudo -u www-data php admin/cli/fast_index.php
18.4. Install and update language packs¶
Typically, if you want to update a language pack, you need to download the entire language pack manually and place it into the appropriate folder. This is cumbersome, especially when you want to update the language packs during minor point updates.
Using CLI, you can speed up the process.
Install or update language packs for your instance of Mahara by listing the language codes.
Example (de = German, fr = French):
sudo -u www-data php admin/cli/sync_langpacks.php -l=de,fr
This will make a backup of the existing languages if they exist into the
dataroot’s langpacks_backup directory.
Notitie
The language codes that are used are the official international ones used for the Mahara language packs.
Don’t make backups: Add the -b=false flag
Example:
sudo -u www-data php admin/cli/sync_langpacks.php -l=de,fr -b=false
Restore a backup: Use the -r=true flag
Example:
sudo -u www-data php admin/cli/sync_langpacks.php -l=de,fr -r=true
This will ignore trying to update the English language as that is set within Mahara itself.