Commands

BookStack has some command line actions that can help with maintenance and common operations. There are also many commands available from the underlying Laravel framework. To list all available commands you can simply run php artisan from your BookStack install folder. Custom BookStack commands are all under the ‘bookstack’ namespace.

Below is a listing of the BookStack specific commands. For any you can provide a -h option to list details and options for the command.

Create an Admin User

Create a new admin user via the command line. Can offer a good last resort if you ever get locked out the system. Will use the details provided as options otherwise will request them interactively.

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# Interactive usage
php artisan bookstack:create-admin

# Non-interactive usage example
php artisan bookstack:create-admin --email="barry@example.com" --name="Bazza" --password="hunter2"

# Defining "External Authentication ID" instead of password for LDAP/SAML2/OIDC environments
php artisan bookstack:create-admin --email="barry.booker@example.com" --name="Bazza" --external-auth-id="bbooker"

Copy Shelf Permission

By default shelf permissions will not auto-cascade since a book can be in many shelves. This command will copy the permissions of a shelf to all child books. This can be done for a single shelf or for all shelves in the system:

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# Run for all shelves
php artisan bookstack:copy-shelf-permissions --all

# Run for a single shelf
php artisan bookstack:copy-shelf-permissions --slug=my_shelf_slug

Update System URL

BookStack will store absolute URL paths for some content, such as images, in the database. If you change your base URL for BookStack this can be problematic. This command will essentially run a find & replace operation on all relevant tables in the database. Be sure to take a database backup for running this command.

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# Searches for <oldUrl> and replaces it with <newUrl>
php artisan bookstack:update-url <oldUrl> <newUrl>

# Example:
php artisan bookstack:update-url http://docs.example.com https://demo.bookstackapp.com

Reset User MFA Methods

This will reset/clear any existing multi-factor-authentication methods for the given user. If MFA is enforced for one of their roles they’ll be prompted to reconfigure MFA upon next login.

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# Via email address:
php artisan bookstack:reset-mfa --email=john@example.com

# Via system ID:
php artisan bookstack:reset-mfa --id=5

Refresh User Avatars

This will re-fetch avatar images for users in the system. By default avatars are fetched from Gravatar unless an alternative avatar system has been configured.

Note: This will not load avatars from any connected authentication system.

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# Refresh avatar for just the user of the given email
php artisan bookstack:refresh-avatar --email=user@example.com
# Or the user of the given id
php artisan bookstack:refresh-avatar --id=101

# Refresh avatars for all users without avatars already assigned
php artisan bookstack:refresh-avatar --users-without-avatars

# Refresh avatars for all users in the system
php artisan bookstack:refresh-avatar --all

Delete All Activity History

This will clear all tracked activities in the system. Note: Some areas of the interface rely on this data, including the Audit Log and any “Recent Activity” lists.

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php artisan bookstack:clear-activity

Delete Page Revisions

By default this deletes all page revisions apart from page update drafts which share the same system. A -a flag can be used to also delete these update drafts.

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# Delete just the page revisions
php artisan bookstack:clear-revisions

# Delete all page revisions from the system including update drafts
php artisan bookstack:clear-revisions -a

Delete Page Views

Delete tracked content views from the system. These are primarily used to populate any “Recently Used” lists.

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php artisan bookstack:clear-views

Cleanup Unused Images

Searches and removes images that are not used in page content. While this can be done in the “Maintenance” section of the interface, running this via the command-line is often safer to avoid timeouts.

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php artisan bookstack:cleanup-images

Regenerate the Search Index

BookStack uses a custom database-based search index system for efficient querying within the system. The command below re-builds this search index. This does not usually need to be manually ran, but it can be useful if manually inserting pages into the system or to pick-up BookStack indexing changes.

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php artisan bookstack:regenerate-search

Regenerate Access Permissions

BookStack pre-calculates and stores certain access permissions in the database so that access can be calculated in a performant manner. The below command will regenerate these permissions. This is primarily used in development but can be useful if manually adding content via the database.

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php artisan bookstack:regenerate-permissions

Regenerate Reference Index

BookStack stores references between content within the system to track how content is interlinked. Such references are generally managed by BookStack upon certain actions, such as when saving a page, but in some cases the below command may help to re-index these references. This can be useful upon upgrade of old content, or when manually adding content via the database.

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php artisan bookstack:regenerate-references

Delete Users

Delete all users from the system that are not original “admin” or system-level users.

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php artisan bookstack:delete-users

Generate UTF8mb4 SQL Upgrade Commands

Generates out the SQL which can be used to upgrade the database to UTF8mb4. See UTF8mb4/Emoji Support for further details.

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php artisan bookstack:db-utf8mb4