StackExchangeBackupLaravel

Allows you to export JSON files of your most important data (questions, answers, comments, favorites) from each of your Stack Exchange sites (Stack Overflow, Super User, Server Fault, etc).

Installation

1. I think this project requires PHP 7.3 or later, so be sure that your system complies.
2. Sign up at https://stackapps.com/apps/oauth/register to receive a Client ID, Client Secret, and Key. (It's free, easy, and fast.)
3. Create a Laravel project, and make sure that it works: https://laravel.com/docs/6.0/installation (e.g. composer create-project --prefer-dist laravel/laravel stackExchangeBackupDemo)
4. Add this package into your Laravel project: vagrant@vboxHomestead:~/Code/MyLaravelProject$ composer require ryancwalsh/stack-exchange-backup-laravel:^2.0.6 (but use whatever the latest release tag number is at https://github.com/ryancwalsh/StackExchangeBackupLaravelPHP/releases).
5. Run php artisan vendor:publish, and if it gives you a choice, choose to publish from this package.
6. Edit your Laravel project's .env file to have your own StackApps values. A non-working sample is below.
7. Run php artisan exportStackExchange. There are also these options available:
   1. php artisan exportStackExchange --forgetCache is an available option to clear the cached access code value.
   2. php artisan exportStackExchange --code="YOUR_CODE" is an available option to provide a code that you've already retrieved from StackExchange.
   3. php artisan exportStackExchange --S3=false is an available option to skip uploading to Amazon S3.
8. Following the instructions in the terminal, you'll use your browser to visit a URL that will provide you with a temporary access token to paste into the terminal.
9. Finished! The JSON files will appear in your /storage/app/StackExchange folder, and a zip of those files will appear in S3.

# These are sample .env values:
STACKAPPS_CLIENT_ID=12227
STACKAPPS_CLIENT_SECRET=ydxGSDFHDF4DtZqCesr)yJIw((
STACKAPPS_KEY=JuWsTgfG2CqjdghkhdgBkQ((
AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=AKIAmb3mbn56mn6
AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=jl234k5jl23k45j23lj5
AWS_DEFAULT_REGION=us-east-1
AWS_BUCKET=xyz

If You Use This Package, Let Me Know!

This is the first package that I've ever made, and I'm super curious if anyone will ever use it. If you do try it out, I'd love for you to open an issue to say hi (and of course to tell me any suggestions you have).

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If You Want To Get Creative...

Visit https://api.stackexchange.com/docs to read the docs, and you can modify ExportStackExchangeHelper.php to do whatever you want. The Stack Exchange API is great.

Other Resources That Helped Me

• I made this README.md file using https://stackedit.io/app.
• https://help.github.com/articles/splitting-a-subfolder-out-into-a-new-repository/

Problems for Ryan locally. Workaround / hack.

The easier way to do what is shown in "Older notes"

2024-07-06_135807_ET

1. In WSL, run cd /mnt/c/code/stackExchangeBackupDemo2 && php artisan exportStackExchange --forgetCache.
2. Visit https://reqbin.com/post-online and log in.
3. In the left panel, click Saved > stackoverflow.
4. change value of "code" to the value from the URL from the first step.
5. Click send.
6. From the new URL, copy the access token.
7. Paste the access token into the "get" function (see FIXNOW) in C:\code\stackExchangeBackupDemo2\vendor\ryancwalsh\stack-exchange-backup-laravel\src\ExportStackExchangeHelper.php.

Older notes (stale?)

https://stackapps.com/questions/10497/suddenly-getting-couldnt-parse-client-id#comment20685_10497 By posting into reqbin.com/post-online in x-www-form-urlencoded mode instead of application/json, I'm able to retrieve an access_token.

url: https://stackoverflow.com/oauth/access_token/json

payload: client_id=(from_laravel.log)__ client_secret=(from_laravel.log)__ code=(from_browser_URL)__ redirect_uri=https://stackexchange.com/oauth/login_success

Get the access_token from the result.

Put a line like return json_encode(['access_token'=> 'Ke4q2tsof5yfPUTf']); as the first line of public function getAccessTokenJson() in C:\code\stackExchangeBackupDemo2\vendor\ryancwalsh\stack-exchange-backup-laravel\src\ExportStackExchangeHelper.php.

In a new VSC window, open C:\code\stack-exchange-backup-laravel\src\ExportStackExchangeHelper.php in its project.

Note that this is NOT symlinked to C:\code\stackExchangeBackupDemo2\vendor\ryancwalsh\stack-exchange-backup-laravel\src\ExportStackExchangeHelper.php