Artisan Commands

DAM ships a set of Artisan commands for installation, maintenance, and migration. Run them from your UnoPim project root.

Command	What it does
dam-package:install	Installs DAM — migrations, seed data, published assets
dam:demo-data	Seeds sample directories and assets
dam:backfill-thumbnails	Generates thumbnails for existing PDFs and videos
dam:version	Prints the installed DAM version
dam:update	Runs the post-upgrade migration with a backup
dam:update:restore	Restores from a backup taken by dam:update
unopim:dam:move-asset-to-s3	Migrates local asset files to AWS S3
dam:generate-scale-data	Seeds large-scale test data for performance testing

---

dam-package:install

Installs DAM. This is the command you run once, right after composer require.

php artisan dam-package:install

It walks through three steps:

1. Migrations — prompts "run the migrations now?" (default yes), then runs migrate and seeds the root directory structure.
2. Publishing — publishes DAM's config and default assets.
3. Demo data — prompts "seed demo data?" (default no). Say yes on a fresh evaluation install to get a populated library immediately; say no on production.

---

dam:demo-data

Seeds a sample library — Accessories, Audio and Video, Clothes, and Documents directories, each with assets — so you can explore DAM without uploading real files first.

php artisan dam:demo-data

The command is idempotent: running it again will not duplicate the demo content.

Option	Effect
--force	Wipes existing assets and re-seeds from scratch.

DANGER

--force deletes all assets under assets/Root/ — not just the demo ones. On a library with real content this destroys your assets. The command asks for explicit confirmation (defaulting to No) before it proceeds. Never run it on production.

---

dam:backfill-thumbnails

Generates real thumbnails — first page for PDFs, first frame for videos — for assets that were uploaded before thumbnail generation existed, or while ffmpeg/poppler-utils were missing.

php artisan dam:backfill-thumbnails

It finds every video and PDF asset with no stored thumbnail and dispatches a generation job for each.

The difference is easy to see in the gallery — generic file-type icons before, real first-page and first-frame previews after:

Option	Effect
--sync	Generates thumbnails immediately, in-process, instead of queueing them.

By default the work is queued, so a queue worker must be running for anything to happen:

php artisan queue:work

Use --sync if you have no queue worker available — but be aware it will block until every thumbnail is generated, which can take a long time on a large library.

NOTE

Requires ffmpeg (video) and poppler-utils / pdftoppm (PDF) on the server. Without them, assets fall back to generic file-type icons.

---

dam:version

Prints the installed DAM version.

php artisan dam:version

---

dam:update

Runs the post-upgrade routine after you have replaced the DAM package code with a newer version. This is what upgrade-dam.sh calls at the end, and what you run manually if you upgraded via Composer.

php artisan dam:update

It performs the following, in order:

1. Counts the rows in every DAM table, to compare against later.
2. Backs up the DAM database tables and asset files to storage/dam-backups/<timestamp>.
3. Runs the new migrations.
4. Publishes updated assets.
5. Clears caches.
6. Verifies no rows were lost. If the row count regressed, it fails and prints the restore command.

Option	Effect
--dry-run	Shows what would happen without changing anything.
--skip-backup	Skips the backup step. Asks for confirmation first.

WARNING

Do not use --skip-backup unless you have your own database and file backup. The backup is what makes the upgrade reversible.

---

dam:update:restore

Restores DAM from a backup created by dam:update.

List the available backups:

php artisan dam:update:restore

Restore a specific one, using the folder name from storage/dam-backups:

php artisan dam:update:restore 2026-07-13-104500

It asks for confirmation, then overwrites the DAM tables and asset files with the backup's contents.

---

unopim:dam:move-asset-to-s3

Migrates DAM asset files from local storage to AWS S3. Configure your S3 credentials first — see DAM Asset Migration to AWS S3.

php artisan unopim:dam:move-asset-to-s3

The command is interactive and will ask you for:

Prompt	Notes
Email and password	Your admin credentials, to authorise the migration.
Migrate only new uploaded files?	Yes moves only files not already on S3 — use this to resume or top up an earlier migration. No re-processes everything.
Delete files from local once uploaded?	Yes frees local disk space after each file transfers successfully. Say no on the first run so you keep a local copy until you have verified S3 is serving correctly.

Files are transferred in batches of 1,000.

---

dam:generate-scale-data

Seeds a large synthetic library so you can see how DAM behaves at scale — how the directory tree, the asset gallery, filters, and permission checks hold up with a million assets rather than the fifty on your dev box.

php artisan dam:generate-scale-data

DANGER

This is a development and testing tool. It writes an enormous amount of data directly into your DAM tables. Never run it against production, or against any database whose contents you care about. Start with --dry-run.

Options

Option	Default	What it does
--assets=	1000000	How many assets to generate.
--directories=	50000	How many directories to create, on top of the ones you already have. Pass 0 to skip directory creation and spread the assets across your existing folders.
--chunk=	10000	Database insert batch size. Lower it if you hit memory or packet-size limits.
--dry-run	—	Reports what would be written and exits without touching the database.
--repair-pivots	—	Backfills the directory link for any assets that ended up with none, rather than generating new data.

Typical use

Preview the plan without writing anything:

php artisan dam:generate-scale-data --dry-run

Generate a smaller, faster set — 50,000 assets across 2,000 directories:

php artisan dam:generate-scale-data --assets=50000 --directories=2000

Generate assets into your existing folder structure instead of creating new folders:

php artisan dam:generate-scale-data --assets=100000 --directories=0

If a run is interrupted and leaves assets with no directory link, repair them:

php artisan dam:generate-scale-data --repair-pivots

TIP

This command is the honest way to test the settings that only matter at scale — Show Assets in Directory Tree and the lazy tree's 100-item batching. Both feel instant on a small library and quite different on a large one.

---

Related

• Installation
• Upgrading DAM
• DAM Asset Migration to AWS S3