Programatically marking as external

I, too, would like to know if there is a best practice for this. Doing dev/stage/prod workflow with Storage API has turned into quite a headache that I'm not sure of a best way to solve.

I will be the first to tell you that doing dev->stage->test->prod is hard and nearly impossible with Storage API in some cases. The way settings have been stored in Storage API makes programmatic changes hard at the moment. This is a major feature request that I haven't even "sniffed" yet.

Basically, this module needs a lot of work to make it more developer friendly.

+1 for this functionality or at least some guidance on how to use Storage API when cloning a prod site to dev/local.

Since the setting isn't in the variable table, I can't set it via settings.php, Features, Strongarm, etc. so I use our environment configuration tool to run the following command after syncing a prod database to a non-prod environment:

drush sql-query "UPDATE storage_container SET external=1 WHERE service_id='storage:s3'"

...obviously not ideal

FYI: for those using https://www.drupal.org/project/habitat here's a custom module that does the same thing: https://gist.github.com/anonymous/48de54997b71cf19f107

The problem is how the data is currently being stored in Storage API for the containers. It is a serialized array in a large VARCHAR field. So the only way to do the dev->prod will be some SQL queries, string operations, and updates.

My concern is the use of storage container credentials from Dev->prod and Prod->dev.

How about a "simple" fix, like adding a global configuration "Mark all containers as external", and saving it with variable_set?

This way, you could in a specific development settings.php file, make a conf settings, like $conf['storage_api_force_external'] = TRUE;, and never have to worry about overriding production stuff again?

That might be an option.

I am also trying to get at some code that was developed for Storage API by Mediacurrent. Weather.com uses Storage API and I had heard that Mediacurrent did some work to improve the dev->prod aspects of Storage API.

I am going to be doing some work on Storage API once I finish up my project with another module (Facebook Tracking pixels).

Alright that sounds very interesting. So basically we should hold our horses, until you get back :-)

If weather.com have solved the dev->prod issue, im quite certain their solution will fit my needs..

Yeah just hoping I can get the code. I asked about it months ago and so far have not got any news.

I been very busy with this module for five months. It is consuming all of my development time (I do Drupal stuff part time and not for a living).

Adding a related issue. This may be a great starting point for this work.

I do not like the widget they use for related issues here on D.O