Daniel Guerrero Thoughts

The SVN library in PHP allows to work with SVN through a working copy or directly to the SVN repository files: http://us.php.net/manual/en/ref.svn.php

The problem is there is really few documentation for the direct access functions to repository (svn_repos_* and svn_fs_*) the code is almost the same to working in C the libsvn, but also there are few documentation, most of the svn command.

The good is that is really easy to work with SVN, basically you only need to:

1. call to svn_repos_open($path) for getting a $repo handler
2. call to svn_repos_fs($repo) to get a $repo_fs handler
3. get the latest revision through:  svn_fs_youngest_rev($repo_fs);
4. Get a $transaction through svn_repos_fs_begin_txn_for_commit($repo, $latest_revision, $commiter, $log_message);
5. Get a $repo_root resource with svn_fs_txn_root($repo_txn);
   With $repo_root will be the most of operations and the $repo_txn will just work for do a commit or abort
6. do all the operations (create a file/dir, remove, set contents)
7. Call to svn_repos_fs_commit_txn($repo_txn); if you want to commit, or svn_fs_abort_txn ( $repo_txn ); if you want to abort the transaction

If you read the part of API for SVN: http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.5/svn.developer.usingapi.html you will see an example for creating a new dir; this code can be easily changed to PHP since the calls are almost the same (replace  svn_repos_fs_begin_txn_for_commit2 for svn_repos_fs_begin_txn_for_commit) I will show you a script for init the repository creating the common paths (branches, tags, trunk) into an empty repository:

<?php
//the path to your repository
$svn_path = "/var/lib/svn/repos/testrepo";

//open the repo
$svn_repo = svn_repos_open($svn_path);

//get a fs handler
$repo_fs = svn_repos_fs($svn_repo);

//get latest revision
$latest_revision = svn_fs_youngest_rev($repo_fs);

//generate a transaction, with user and log message
$repo_txn = svn_repos_fs_begin_txn_for_commit($svn_repo, $latest_revision, 'user-repo-label', 'Creating paths');

//get the root respource to this transaction
$repo_root = svn_fs_txn_root($repo_txn);

//create the dirs
svn_fs_make_dir($repo_root, "trunk");
svn_fs_make_dir($repo_root, "tags");
svn_fs_make_dir($repo_root, "branches");

//finally commit the transaction
svn_repos_fs_commit_txn($repo_txn);

This script is called: create-repository-paths.php

You will see at end the list of scripts, the order to use is: (with svn commands in the console to check if worked):

#create SVN repository
danguer@rukia:~$ svnadmin create /var/lib/svn/repos/testrepo
#checking is empty
danguer@rukia:~$ svn ls file:///var/lib/svn/repos/testrepo

#create paths
danguer@rukia:~$ php create-repository-paths.php
danguer@rukia:~$ svn ls file:///var/lib/svn/repos/testrepo
branches/
tags/
trunk/

#creating dirs
danguer@rukia:~$ php create-dirs-recursive.php
danguer@rukia:~$ svn ls file:///var/lib/svn/repos/testrepo/test
subdir1/
danguer@rukia:~$ svn ls file:///var/lib/svn/repos/testrepo/test/subdir1
subdir2/
danguer@rukia:~$ svn ls file:///var/lib/svn/repos/testrepo/test/subdir1/subdir2
subdir3/
danguer@rukia:~$ svn ls file:///var/lib/svn/repos/testrepo/test/subdir1/subdir2/subdir3

#create a new file
danguer@rukia:~$ php write-contents.php
danguer@rukia:~$ svn ls file:///var/lib/svn/repos/testrepo/test/myfile.txt
myfile.txt
danguer@rukia:~$ svn cat file:///var/lib/svn/repos/testrepo/test/myfile.txt
Lorem Ipsum, file generated with svn

#remove file
danguer@rukia:~$ php remove-object.php
danguer@rukia:~$ svn cat file:///var/lib/svn/repos/testrepo/test/myfile.txt
svn: File not found: revision 4, path '/test/myfile.txt'

Scripts:

• https://github.com/danguer/blog-examples/blob/master/php/svn/recipes/create-repository-paths.php
• https://github.com/danguer/blog-examples/blob/master/php/svn/recipes/create-dirs-recursive.php
• https://github.com/danguer/blog-examples/blob/master/php/svn/recipes/write-contents.php
• https://github.com/danguer/blog-examples/blob/master/php/svn/recipes/remove-object.php