Simple File Backup

Overview

This module lets you back up a single file periodically. It is possible to configure more than one backup period, and limit the maximum number of backup files to keep (per backup period).

Installation

Install this module with:

pip install simple_file_backup

The module exposes the simple-file-backup command-line application.

Command Line Usage

Access the command line help with simple-file-backup -h:

simple-file-backup -h
usage: simple-file-backup FILE_PATH BACKUP_DIR_PATH [-ext EXT] [-conf CONF]

Console application for periodically backing up a single file.

positional arguments:
  file_path        path of file to back up
  backup_dir_path  path of the directory for the backups

optional arguments:
  -h, --help       show this help message and exit
  -ext EXT         file extension of the backups; default is '.bak'
  -prefix PREFIX   backup file name prefix; default is 'backup'
  -conf FILE       path to an optional config file that defines the backup intervals,
                   subdirectories and file limits; by default hourly, daily, weekly and
                   30-day interval backups are created with 48, 14, 12 and unlimited
                   number of files respectively
  -method METHOD   backup method; the default is 'copy' (simple file copy), for sqlite3
                   database files, use 'sqlite3' to avoid corrupting the backups

A separate subdirectory for every backup period will be created within the passed backup directory.

Configuration File

The configuration file is JSON. Backup subdirectory name, backup period (in hours) and file limit per backup period must be configured. For no file limit, pass "inf" as string.

[
    {
        "dirname": "every_minute",
        "period": 0.166667,
        "limit": 10
    },
    {
        "dirname": "every_hour",
        "period": 1,
        "limit": 24
    },
    {
        "dirname": "every_day",
        "period": 24,
        "limit": 30
    },
    {
        "dirname": "every_30days",
        "period": 720,
        "limit": "inf"
    }
]

Python Example

The module can be imported. It exposes the SimpleFileBackup class. In this use case the configuration must be passed as a list of dicts (with the same scheme as the config JSON file).

from simple_file_backup import SimpleFileBackup

backup_inst = SimpleFileBackup(
    file_path="file_to_back_up.txt",
    backup_dir_path="backup_dir",
    prefix="file_backed_up",  # optional, defaults to "backup"
    extension=".txt"  # optional, defaults to ".bak"
    backup_config=[
        {
            "dirname": "hourly",
            "period": 1,
            "limit": 24
        },
        {
            "dirname": "daily",
            "period": 24,
            "limit": "inf"
        }
    ],  # optional, defaults to the same backup periods as the command line version
    backup_method="copy"  # optional, defaults to "copy" (alternative: "sqlite3")
)

# this gets an asyncio loop, creates the backup tasks and runs the loop forever:
backup_inst.run()

Optionally, if integrating into another asyncio application, the tasks can be created on the existing loop without creating and running the loop with the create_tasks(loop) method.