3.5.8 – Backup/Restore Format Change
The short version:
With version 3.5.8 the backup file format has changed to a new format.
So all backups prior to 3.5.8 are not compatible anymore to restore on 3.5.8 and up.
If you update to 3.5.8 and need to restore a backup from 3.5.7 or lower you can send me the backup files and I will convert it to the new 3.5.8 format.
The long version:
The old backup way was to copy the whole database file from the app directory to the clouds or external storage to save it.
On restore the whole database file was copied back to the app directory.
This was working with older Android versions in the past.
But with Android 7 changes on security I got a lot of problems when I wan to copy a whole database to the app folder.
This has worked on some phone manufacturers and on others not.
And all phones had different behaviours after restore. On some I need to close the app to see the data and on others it was enough to close the database and reopen it.
With Android 9 there was the next major change in the Android system.
The database files in the app directory has changed. They added/activated an “cached” database.
So if I restore only the backuped database file no data was visible because the “cached” database was missing.
Again I changed this to save/backup also the cached database to fix this problem.
A few months later I got reports that this is also not working on some phones.
The problem was that even if I copy both database files the system hasn’t recognized the new data on some installations.
This was the point I decided to remove the old way of backup and created a whole new format.
Now the database file will be exported and on restore it will be imported.
The benefit is that the new file is compatible with all Android version and hopefully all phone manufacturers.
You can even restore in the future a backup from an older COL Reminder version to a new COL Reminder version.
So it was a lot of work to code this but I hope it has a lot better user experience in the future.
If you find problems or have question please don’t hesitate to contact me.
