Rescue and restore data of a Confluence page that does not render anymore.
Encountering a page in Confluence that no longer renders makes it not only impossible view, but also to edit it. The author has no means to correct the problem. If the log file is empty, the author not even has a clue what is wrong. How to rescue and restore such a problem Confluence page?
This tip shows you how using SQL.
Summary
This short tip has shown how to manually retrieve the page ID, different versions and the data in storage format to recover a page that can not be rendered in Confluence.
Access the Page in the Database
Using the following database select (here for a MySQL database) you can determine the Page IDs (aka Content IDs) of all versions to this page.
SELECT BC.CONTENTID, C.VERSION, C.PREVVER
FROM BODYCONTENT BC JOIN CONTENT C ON BC.CONTENTID = C.CONTENTID
WHERE C.TITLE = 'TITLE OF PAGE';
+-----------+---------+-----------+
| CONTENTID | VERSION | PREVVER |
+-----------+---------+-----------+
| 100664427 | 4 | NULL |
| 100664428 | 1 | 100664427 |
| 100664429 | 1 | 100664427 |
| 100664466 | 2 | 100664427 |
| 101515286 | 3 | 100664427 |
+-----------+---------+-----------+
With CONTENTID 100664427 being the latest one as the version is the largest number and the value in the PREVVER column is NULL.
Access the Page via the User Interface
Now use this URL (please prepend the server like https://my.example.com):
- /confluence/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=xxxxxxxx
- View the version of the page you identify with the ID.
- /confluence/pages/diffpagesbyversion.action?pageId=xxxNEWESTxxx&selectedPageVersions=3&selectedPageVersions=2
- View the differences of two versions of a page.
- /confluence/pages/editpage.action?pageId=xxxxxx
- Open the page in the editor.
Access Page in the Database
If these options did not help to retrieve the content, it can be saved to a text file by using the following statement:
SELECT BC.BODY FROM BODYCONTENT BC JOIN CONTENT C ON BC.CONTENTID = C.CONTENTID
WHERE C.TITLE = 'TITLE OF PAGE' AND C.PREVVER IS NULL
INTO OUTFILE '/tmp/save.source';
References
Related article on the smartics blog: