Upgrading

Summary   : How to upgrade from a previous version of Facile Forms
Author    : Peter Koch
Created   : 2006-04-30
Revisions : 2006-09-28
Based on  : Facile Forms 1.4.7,  Joomla 1.0.11 
Applies to: Facile Forms 1.0.0 ... 1.4.7, Joomla 1.0.0 ... 1.0.11, Mambo 4.5.1 ... 4.6

If you want to upgrade to a new release you may wonder how to do it without loosing your forms.

The current available Mambo and Joomla versions all lack a built in support for upgrading components. You can only uninstall the old version and then install a newer version, however there is now way to tell Mambo/Joomla if it shall keep or dump data created with the component.

There are several aproaches from component developers to handle upgrades. Many just dont care and dump your data at uninstallation, however Facile Forms does not fall into this category. All data is retained for safety and to avoid loosing your work accidently. The drawback is however that you therfore need to manually remove the Facile Forms tables (as well as any tables created by forms) when you want to do a clean uninstall. To do a clean uninstall please read the Uninstalling howto.

So basicly if you want to upgrade all you need to do is first uninstall the old release and then install the new release. However for safety I recommend to first make a backup just in case anything goes wrong. You can do that either by backing of the Facile Forms tables with phpMyAdmin, or even with Facile Forms itself by making a package of all objects you want to keep.

Other things to consider:

• If you have modified any of the standard samples or library functions, those modifications will be lost. Modifying standard samples or library functions is bad practice. In case you really need to, allways rename the respective function or form and change the package.
• After upgrading the mambot you need to also publish it.
• For technical reasons the module settings cannot be saved. You need to redefine and publish the module settings after upgrading.

After installing the new release, and the first time you access the backend menu of Facile Forms, the installation step 2 window will appear again that you allready have faced in the initial installation. If will ask you about tasks to be run against the database, and if it should install samples and libraries. The installer tries to detect the previously installed release and suggest the proper upgrading mode. You should verify that the suggestion is matching your upgrade before continuing. So for example if you had previously installed 1.3.3 and now are installing 1.4.4, select Upgrading from 1.3.*. I also recommend to select reinstallation of the samples and libraries.

Then click Continue until the installation is complete.

Thats all!