Import/export app settings

[DomeDrake]

• I have searched for existing issues that may be the same as or related to mine.

I would love to see this feature added. Not only would it greatly enhance the ease of setup of Orgzly R on a new phone, it would also give great peace of mind knowing one has not forgotten to write down anything when documenting ones own settings.

Thank you for all the work! :)

For the sake of completeness: This has been suggested for the original App orgzly/orgzly-android #156 by @mjf, too.

[stfl]

Would be nice to load config from a file within the repo. Or possible export/import to a file like with searches

[amberin]

Yes, I believe we should add an option to store all settings in a hidden file or dir in a repo. Either in a single JSON/TOML/YAML file, or in a .orgzlysettings directory with multiple files. (Alternatively in a special type of org notebook, but then we'd probably have to write lots of parsing code.)

This should be a big UX improvement when it comes to saving search queries and any other settings.

The configuration scheme would probably need to be versioned to allow improvements without breaking stuff.

I'm thinking there would be a new section somewhere in settings, where the user can choose which settings they want to store in the repo, if any. Or maybe that's over-engineering things, and we should start with a simple toggle: either store all settings in the file, or none? I guess it depends on whether we read and write to/from the file continually, or only upon a user import/export action.

I suppose it would be useless (or risky) to store configured repos in this file, even though we do support multiple repos, and the file would only go into one of them.

Currently, Git repos support an .orgzlyignore file. This should probably be supported by all repos (as a general solution to things like #147), and moved to this solution, if implemented.

[DanielKonopka]

Why not simply allow for importing & exporting of the entire /data/data/com.orgzlyrevived/databases/orgzly.db SQLite file?

[amberin]

Why not simply allow for importing & exporting of the entire /data/data/com.orgzlyrevived/databases/orgzly.db SQLite file?

Sure, that's possible, but a text file would be much more portable.

I also think a major benefit of storing settings in a text file in the repo is that it would allow continuous backup of settings, so that setting up a new device is always really easy, without relying on a manual export having been done.

[Ypot]

A headline in any of the orgzly notebooks would do it?

Like:
** Orgzly revived settings
...

[amberin]

Yes, that is definitely worth looking into. We already have the ability to parse and write org files, but not other file types, so an ORG-based solution may very well require less new code. And perhaps org note properties could be one solution for storing key value pairs.

[v-Nyo]

Honestly this is a crucial feature in my opinion. If you have many phones and/or many user profiles this quickly becomes a pain otherwise.

I think the best solution would be a portable file in the org dir AND an option to manually import/export.

[amberin]

I believe we should start with a manual export/import feature, and then build on that later. Continuously syncing to a repo file is probably a bit more involved, since it involves changes and conflicts.

[DanielKonopka]

@amberin Any heads-up on this? It's an absolutely crucial feature. Wish I could implement this on my own and contribute that way.

[rezaamashi]

+1 on this. This has been a hassle for me anytime I update my OS or for some reason I had to reinstall Orgzly Revived.

I have my preferred setup and some custom searches for widgets. Going back to the docs and setting the query up again one by one every time things come up is a lot of hassle in the UX.

Personally I have a Backups directory that I sync to my NAS and my laptop. It contains backed up data of some apps and setting configurations for apps that support exporting/importing settings, eg. syncthing, yt-revanced, aegis. But I am open to any app settings backup implementation.

Edit: When I browse my Orgzly Directory (to make .orgzlyignore for syncthing conflicts) I noticed that there is an Orgzly Search Query.json. I don't know if it was from Orgzly or Orgzly Revived. It contains list of the query that is used in search, but in my Orgzly Revived version it seems that it is NOT the one being used in the Searches queries. Since it is different and seems like it is from my older query configuration.

Edit 2: Also this #493 maybe could be prevented if Orgzly Revived have proper setting backup in place