[AndMetal]

Sheesh, I go away for 17 hours and everyone freaks out...

Anyways, to address the questions:

Originally Posted by trevius

Can you give an example of using the script?

cavedude pretty much got it. I would recommend using the -h (for [h]elp) switch, recommended in the changelog:

==11/24/2008==
AndMetal: Spells can now be loaded from the database, and is now enabled by default. Use utils/import_spells.pl to import, utils/export_spells.pl to export. Use -h on either for usage.

Required SQL: utils/sql/svn/229_spells_table.sql

perl import_spells.pl -h

perl export_spells.pl -h

which gives the usage (which I also posted above):

Originally Posted by AndMetal

Usage: import_spells.pl [-c path] [-s path] [-t table] [-d]
  -c path       path/to/eqemu_config.xml. defaults to eqemu_config.xml
  -s path       path/to/spells_us.txt. defaults to spells_us.txt
  -t table      table to load the spells into. defaults to spells_new
  -d            erase all spells from the database first

Originally Posted by AndMetal

Usage: export_spells.pl [-c path] [-t table] [-i column] [-s path] [-o]
  -c path       path/to/eqemu_config.xml. defaults to eqemu_config.xml
  -t table      table to load the spells from. defaults to spells_new
  -i column     name of the column in the database table to order by. defaults to id
  -s path       path/to/export/spells_us.txt. defaults to spells_us.txt
  -o            overwrite spells_us.txt if it exists

By default, it will look for both eqemu_config.xml & spells_us.txt in the current directory (as indicated in the usage info for the switches, since they don't have any /'s before the names of the files), so you could easily just execute it from your server directory. For me, I would end up using something like this, cause even though symbolic links are awesome, I don't really like making them a lot:

eqemu@amsk-server:~/svn/EQEmuServer/utils$ perl import_spells.pl -c ~/server/eqemu_config.xml -s ~/server/spells_us.txt -d

eqemu@amsk-server:~/svn/EQEmuServer/utils$ perl export_spells.pl -c ~/server/eqemu_config.xml -s /var/www/eqemu/spells_us.txt -o

Then, you can just add the export to your startup script so it exports at runtime if you wanna be one of the cool kids

Originally Posted by trevius

Also, how do you disable using this so it continues to use the normal spells file? From reading the changelog, it sounds like it is supposed to use this table by default. I am guessing that means it will ignore the spells file unless you disable this feature? Or, will it use the spells file if it can't find the table?

The idea is this will replace using the spells file. The only reason I didn't just straight take out the old stuff is so everyone can continue to use it if they want to (just like turning bots on, SPELL_EFFECT_SPAM, etc) by changing the #defines in zone/spdat.h:

//#define NEW_LoadSPDat
#define DB_LoadSPDat  //load from DB vs spells_us.txt. for now, we're piggybacking NEW_LoadSPDat, so it will take precedence

One change I might make would be to create a default case if neither are defined:

//#define NEW_LoadSPDat
#define DB_LoadSPDat  //load from DB vs spells_us.txt. for now, we're piggybacking NEW_LoadSPDat, so it will take precedence
#if !defined(NEW_LoadSPDat) && !defined(DB_LoadSPDat)
#define NEW_LoadSPDat
#endif

However, then we're completely rid of the real old way of doing it (lots of hard coding). I honestly don't think anyone's using that old code, but who knows.

Originally Posted by trevius

BTW, your code box in your export script post says "import", not "export" for usage.

Minor typo. I was copying/pasting the top half of the scripts, and forgot to make that change.

Originally Posted by KLS

Just for the future: I'd rather you turn large (potentially game breaking) features off by default at least at first when they coexist with previous implementations.

I've actually been using this code, successfully, for just shy of a month (since October 27th to be specific). The only thing that took a little time was the scripts to import/export the spells (having a kid in the middle of all that did slow things down a bit). Not only that, but the main thing it's doing is loading spells into the spells[] "array" from the database instead of the spells_us.txt file. There were also a few unknown values in the SPDat_Spell_Struct struct that I came across, but I made sure it worked with the spells_us.txt file before I even tested with the database (which caused problems with sharedmem a few months ago when I first started working on it). I personally don't consider it to be a "large feature", rather just a bunch of copying, pasting, & tweaking of existing code.

Originally Posted by leslamarch

Been trying the export script for 2 hours now with no luck

perl export_spells.pl
install_driver(mysql) failed: Can't locate DBD/mysql.pm in @INC (@INC contains:
C:/Perl/site/lib C:/Perl/lib .) at (eval 4) line 3, <F> line 36.
Perhaps the DBD::mysql perl module hasn't been fully installed,
or perhaps the capitalisation of 'mysql' isn't right.
Available drivers: DBM, ExampleP, File, Gofer, Proxy, SQLite, Sponge, mysqlPP.
 at export_spells.pl line 62

*waves the white flag*

I'm running Debian & have libdbi-perl & libdbd-mysql-perl. The scripts use DBI, so Perl probably just assumes MySQL when trying to connect to the server (automatically negotiated maybe?):

use DBI;
use Getopt::Std;

As far as I can tell, both of the DB packages are installed automatically when installing the MySQL 5.0 server, again at least on Debian.

I guess the question now is anyone actually having problems after getting the spells into the database? Because other than that, I'm not sure what all the ruckus is about...

I know it compiles, I know it runs, I know it works, and made sure to test it thoroughly before I got to this point. I even just checked my launcher status page & haven't had any zone crashes since my server was booted up at 6:28am today.