migrating entire set of attributes and attribute sets to a fresh installation

Question

I have a rather large set of attributes and a dozen attribute sets that I need to migrate to a fresh installation of Magento of the same version down the road. I'd like to do this without carrying over the attribute values theselves.

Has anyone done this safely? I have exported-imported the eav_* and catalog_eav_attribute in the past to move all attribute-related data while testing some things, and it seemed to have work without problems that I could notice. But what if I want to just perfectly copy over attributes, attribute sets, and no attribute values that are new to the fresh installation (i.e. no products)?

Answer 1

I also had to deal with this kind of issue once.

Possible ways of migrating the attributes and attribute-sets to a fresh (!!) installation:

Copying tables to the new database

As the OP already already mentioned, copying the eav_* and catalog_eav_attribute is a possible option.

Creating setup scripts to execute on the new installation

This is the best-practise way in this case. The OP mentioned Magento shell scripts above, but I guess Magento setup/data scripts where meant. Create a new module, add a setup or a data resource and add your script(s) which contain the code to generate your attributes and attribute sets.

You can have a look at the eav_setup and catalog_setup how Magento sets up the default attributes & attribute sets.

Use SOAP

If you don't have/cannot get access to the second magento installation, you could think about writing a SOAP-script to retrieve the attributes and attribute-sets. This is not the fastest option of all, but still a possibility. Be aware that the functions of the SOAP API is limited.

Personal note: I think I can remember that I have encountered some issues with the attribute groups, so you might need to extend the SOAP functions at least a bit.