MySQL

• About
• Availability
• Enabling
• Configuration changes
• Data conversion
  • Downloading from MySQL to files
  • Uploading from files to MySQL
• Synchronization frequency

About

By default, groups and users are stored in separate files (groups.yml and users.yml).
Enabling MySQL will use it as storage of groups and users instead of the files.

playerdata.yml file (for toggling scoreboard/bossbar and remembering the decision) is not affected and will still be used instead of MySQL. It may be added in the future.

All tables from TAB are prefixed with tab_, currently tab_groups for groups and tab_users for users.

Availability

Before attempting to use the function, make sure your server software has an integrated MySQL driver. TAB does not contain it by itself. See the compatibility table below for current information about compatibility:

Platform	Available
Bukkit	✔
BungeeCord	✔
Fabric	❌
Sponge	❌
Velocity	❌

Enabling

Find this section in config.yml:

mysql:
  enabled: false
  host: 127.0.0.1
  port: 3306
  database: tab
  username: user
  password: password
  useSSL: true

Enabling it will enable MySQL. The other settings are pretty straight forward.

Configuration changes

Once enabled, configured values in groups.yml and users.yml will not be visible anymore, which is expected because your database is empty when created. This is not a bug. All you need to do is upload your data to the database.

Since groups.yml and users.yml files will no longer be used, making any changes to them will take no effect. If you wish to perform any changes, you have 2 options:

• Use in-game commands, which will upload changes to the database
• Upload the file to the database after every change (will not work for removing though) (useful when enabling for the first time).

Data conversion

Downloading from MySQL to files

This can be done using /tab mysql download command (permission is tab.mysql.download). It will download all data from the MySQL and save into groups.yml / users.yml.
This command requires the MySQL function enabled.
Existing data in files will not intentionally be deleted, but may get overwritten.

Uploading from files to MySQL

This can be done using /tab mysql upload command (permission is tab.mysql.upload). It will upload all content from groups.yml and users.yml into MySQL.
This command requires the MySQL function enabled.
Existing data in the database will not intentionally be deleted, but may get overwritten.

Synchronization frequency

When using files to store data, it's simple - groups.yml and users.yml files are loaded into memory and read from when needed. When a command is run to update something, it is updated in memory and saved into files as well.

When using MySQL, the plugin has to keep data up to date with other servers, but at the same time not kill the server with requests all the time.
For writing, both groups and users, whenever a command is used to update something, the update is sent to the database immediately.
For reading, data is updated as following:

• Groups - All data from groups table is loaded into memory on a load (server start, plugin reload). When a player joins in or any other action, values from memory are checked. Therefore, if a change is made on another server, it will not be visible until the plugin is reloaded.
• Users - Nothing is loaded on a plugin load. Whenever a player joins, all data of that player is requested from the database. Therefore, if a player's data changes on another server, it is visible immediately when a player joins this one, without the need to reload the plugin.