Application Updates

Keystone includes an updates framework, which you can enable by setting the auto update option to true.

Updates provide an easy way to seed your database, transition data when your models change, or run transformation scripts against your database.

Update files should be named using a semantic version followed by an optional key, like 0.0.1-init.js. The version numbers are used to order the update scripts correctly, while the keys are a nice way to identify what each update does.

Each update file should export a single function, which should accept a single argument - the next(err) callback, to be called when the update is complete.

All the update files will be executed (each one waits for the previous update to complete) before the web server is started.

If the next callback is receives an error it will be reported to the console, and application initialisation will halt.

You can temporarily disable updates from running in development by setting a __defer__ property on the exported function to true. Any subsequent updates will be skipped, but the application will be started.

Updates are only run once, and each completed update is logged in an app_updates collection in your database.

Update Script Example Creates a new admin User

var keystone = require('keystone'),
    User = keystone.list('User');

exports = module.exports = function(done) {
    new User.model({
        name: { first: 'Admin', last: 'User' },
        password: 'admin',
        isAdmin: true
    }).save(done);
};