Snapshots

Snapshots capture a sandbox recovery point.

wp rudel snapshot alpha-3be7 --name=before-test

Restore a snapshot:

wp rudel restore alpha-3be7 --snapshot=before-test

restore asks for confirmation; --force skips the prompt. Snapshot names are up to 64 letters, digits, dots, dashes or underscores, starting with a letter or digit.

Snapshots are for sandbox recovery, not for runtime identity. The environment record remains the source of truth for the sandbox.

What snapshots capture

• every table with the sandbox prefix, users included, copied in the same database under {sandbox_prefix}snap_{hash}_, for example wp_b65338d_snap_3ba676_options
• the sandbox theme directory, copied to snapshots/{name}/themes in the sandbox directory
• metadata in snapshots/{name}/snapshot.json and snapshots/{name}/db_snapshot.json

A snapshot therefore costs a full copy of the sandbox tables in the host database plus a copy of the theme files.

What snapshots do not capture

• host WordPress core
• shared plugin files
• shared uploads

Restore

A restore drops the sandbox tables (keeping snapshot tables), copies the snapshot tables back, and replaces the sandbox theme directory with the saved copy.

By default Rudel first saves the current state as a snapshot named pre-restore-{timestamp}-{hash}, so a restore can be undone. Set auto_snapshot_before_restore to 0 in rudel_config to turn that off.

Listing and removing

There is no CLI command to list or delete snapshots. From PHP, Rudel::snapshots( $id ) lists them, newest first. Snapshot tables are dropped when the sandbox is destroyed; until then they stay, including the automatic pre-restore-* ones (issue #5).