Filer is similar to common file systems and people may ask for similar tools.

Copy to Filer

weed filer.copy can copy one or a list of files or directories to filer.

// copy all go files under current directory to filer's /github/ folder.
// The directory structure is copied also.
> weed filer.copy -include *.go . http://localhost:8888/github/
...
Copy ./unmaintained/change_replication/change_replication.go => http://localhost:8888/github/./unmaintained/change_replication/change_replication.go
Copy ./unmaintained/fix_dat/fix_dat.go => http://localhost:8888/github/./unmaintained/fix_dat/fix_dat.go
Copy ./unmaintained/see_idx/see_idx.go => http://localhost:8888/github/./unmaintained/see_idx/see_idx.go
Copy ./weed/command/backup.go => http://localhost:8888/github/./weed/command/backup.go
Copy ./weed/command/benchmark.go => http://localhost:8888/github/./weed/command/benchmark.go
Copy ./weed/command/command.go => http://localhost:8888/github/./weed/command/command.go
Copy ./weed/command/compact.go => http://localhost:8888/github/./weed/command/compact.go
...

The above weed copy command is very efficient. It will contact the master server for a fileId, and submit the file content to volume servers, then just create the entry on filer. Also, the file copying will also split large files into trunks automatically.

This put very little loads on filer and the master server. Data is only transmitted between the local machine and the volume server.

Register a file on Filer

As mentioned above, the (path, fileId, fileSize) can be registered on filer with this gRPC call.

filer_pb.SeaweedFilerClient.CreateEntry()

The code example can be found in filer_copy.go file.