InitialData

Adding new records into RT's database

This might be helpful if you want to add a record in the RT DB and don't want to mess things by SQL INSERT queries and don't want to write code.

This is especially helpful when you write custom scrip actions/conditions as module files instead of using User Defined and want to register them in the DB.

rt-setup-database and initialdata

RT comes with etc/initialdata file that is parsed and inserted into newly created DB when you install for the first time. When you upgrade RT, database changes comes in similar file.

Basic idea is that you can write such files and use sbin/rt-setup-database script to insert the data:

/path/to/rt3/sbin/rt-setup-database --action insert --datafile /path/to/data-file

Example

@ScripConditions = (
   { Name           => 'On Some Event',
     Description   => 'When some event happens',
     ExecModule  => 'SomeEvent',
     Argument     => 'some argument',
     ApplicableTransTypes => 'Any'
   },
 );

How it works

File should be a valid perl scrip that fill a bunch of arrays with data that should be inserted, for example: @Queues, @Scrips, @Groups and so on. Full list of available arrays you can find in method InsertData that is in lib/RT/Handle.pm file.

You put hashes with key/value pairs into these arrays. So it looks like this:

@SomeArray = (
  {
     key => 'value',
     key => 'value',
     ...
  },
  {
     key => 'value',
     key => 'value',
     ...
  },
  ...
);
@AnotherArray = (
  {
     ...
  },
  ...
);

Usually you don't write any code, but this doesn't mean you can not. Sometimes you do want to write a bit of code, for example to load a bunch of data from a text file.

Where to find more info

There is no much to document about it and there are plenty of examples in RT itself. Start from etc/initialdata then look at etc/upgrade/*/content files, then look at the same set in RTIR extension or any other extension.

See also

WriteCustomAction and WriteCustomCondition for details on @ScripActions and @ScripConditions