Here's a quick code snippet I use to programmatically create new users:

And, here's how you can update an existing user:

If you wanted to update an existing user's profile data:

Version control is an essential tool when it comes to maintaining your code and properly tracking filesystem changes. In this quick tutorial, I'll show you how to update a Drupal module in a subversion integrated environment using rsync. Since simply copying the contents of a new module update on top of your current directory structure is a bad idea (since it will NOT account for file deletions), rsync is a great solution for syncing module update changes. NOTE: it is a bad idea to update a module in a production environment without proper testing; this code assumes you are working in a development environment.

The first step is to download the latest (and in most cases, stable) package for the module you'd like to update to a directory outside your drupal path. For my Drupal installations, I browse to the Available updates page (admin/reports/updates) and copy the URL from this page. Next I go to my shell, use wget to fetch the package to my home directory, and unpack the file:

Now you can run the rsync command to apply the filesystem changes to your Drupal module directory. You'll have to update the paths listed below to match your filesystem and Drupal installation.

If executed properly, you can change directory to the module you are trying to update and run an "svn stat" command to see what has been updated. NOTE: the below output is simulated to show common svn status changes.

At this point, you should see a list of all the files that have changed with this module update. You can now run the update.php script in your development environment and verify the changes are working properly. If everything is working properly, you can commit the module update changes...

Now, you can safely deploy the module changes to your production environment (svn update), run the update.php script, and ensure everything is working properly.

Back in December 2008 I posted a blog entry on how to upgrade a subversion integrated Drupal site. This procedure was based on the process of unpacking the new Drupal installation, copying the sites folder into the new Drupal installation, and checking everything back into subversion. Although this is the recommended and cleanest way to upgrade Drupal, it may be a hassle if you have a huge repository and lots of files. So why not just overwrite the old directory with the new Drupal files? Well first of all, it would be good to take into consideration file deletions; and second, I've always been the kind of person who believes in fresh installs. I'd rather reinstall my operation system versus upgrading it. If you insist on overwriting the files, here's how you can do it...

Go to /admin/reports/updates to checkout which version your currently running and which is recommended. Download the new version of Drupal, along with the current version of your Drupal installation. If you can't find the current version, look for the "View all releases" link here: http://drupal.org/project/drupal

Next, unpack both of the files:

Now, use the diff command to compare the directories:

You'll see a lines of output that resemble the following:

Files that differ are OK, we can easily copy them into our current installation and check them in as modifications. To ignore those lines, we can run the previous command and tack on a grep statement to ignore them:

Hopefully, the previous command will return no output. If the diff command returned any output, it's probably telling you a file exists in one version and not the other. You'll have to manually resolve these subversion changes.

If the previous diff command returned no output, the new Drupal installation can be simply be copied on top of your current installation. But first, let's keep track of how many changes there were. NOTE: the next command assumes your current Drupal environment is up to date (the HEAD revision) and every file has been checked into the repository prior to the upgrade.

If the numbers match, run the update.php script. And if all went well, commit the changes:

I recently had to deploy some new code to an old production environment. Like a good doobie, I made all my changes in a local checked out copy of the subversion file system. I did not want to break the production environment, so I copied the entire vhost into my home directory on the server. I tried to execute an svn update command, but it terminated with the message: object of the same name already exists. This means that a file was creating in my development environment (later revision) that was also created in the production environment. When I ran a svn stat command, there were too many additions, deletions, and modifications, so I decided to write a PHP script to compare the directory structure and files of the 2 environments. I used this script to analyze the file system and create a deployment plan...