An option on the Tools to export Customizer data

[utsavsinghrathour]

While changing between hosts, when we copy the database and files to the new host, the customizer data behave oddly. Nothing shows up on customizer section, while the site does have the data stored in database.

[westonruter]

Thanks for the report. How are you copying the data to the new host? Are you doing host name replacements in the process? If so, are you accounting for replacements made inside of serialize strings?

[utsavsinghrathour]

I am not doing it for customizer yet. But if an in-built tool was available, it could be of ease?

[westonruter]

@utsavsinghrathour But what is the underlying mechanism you are using for moving the database between hosts? Are you changing the home URL in the process?

My assumption is that your database is getting corrupted in the migration, specifically that the serialized data is breaking.

[utsavsinghrathour]

What I am doing, is changing the URL and regenerating the serialized array and updating the databse. But would love if it would be inbuilt. I could submit a patch for this.

[westonruter]

@utsavsinghrathour I think the process you are using is causing the problem, and that there is not a bug in Core here. I often copy the database from one environment to another and do wp search-replace using WP-CLI to update the hostnames, and I never see the data in the Customizer being dropped on the destination environment.

[utsavsinghrathour]

Hmm. I do the same as well. Was just wondering if it could be built-in, in the system itself.

Will close this then.

Thank you :)