What does the --purge-older-than (-u) switch actually do on HipChat Server export?

[Bret Marzolf]

There's almost no documentation on this switch, so its difficult to know what it does and how to use it.

In terms of documentation, the only thing I saw was this blurb from the HipChat Server release notes page:

• Exports can be purged by age, in days: hipchat export --purge-older-than 7

I've played around with it a bit, but I've made two observations:

1. I can't use the -e and -u switches at the same time - if you do then, your export won't actually start.
2. The -u switch doesn't actually seem to purge data. If I have chat history data for 2 days and I do something like this:

hipchat export -e ...

(result: I export 2 days worth of data)

hipchat export -u 1

(not sure what happens here)

and then I do the export again...

hipchat export -e ...

I still see the same 2 days worth of data exported like I did on the first export

Anyone know how this is really supposed to work?

[ramiro · Accepted solution]

Hi Bret,

The hipchat export -e ...  command is used to start a new export process. The result of this process is going to be a .tar.gz.aes file with all the messages from your server (more info on the full contents here).

The hipchat export --purge-older-than command deletes any export files that are older than the N days, where N is the value you passed. It only deletes the files produced by the exporter itself, it doesn't affect the room history, nor anything else on the server.  The -e and -u parameters are not meant to be used together, as you already noticed. 

We' ll make sure the documentation is clearer on this aspect, thanks for bringing it up.

Hope it helps!

[Bret Marzolf]

Thanks for this helpful answer. So, it doesn't appear that there are any switches on the export command that control the range of data you are getting in the export? It would be nice if I could say "only export data for chat history that occurred newer than 1 day" or "only export data for chat history that occurred between these two dates"