How to set the public file path to migrate site files and images through Migrate Drupal UI

Question

I am working on migrating a drupal 7 site to drupal 8 site that has image fields in content types, as well as some pdf files that I am trying to migrate through the Migrate UI. None of those files are in private directories. I have run the migration through the core Migrate UI many times and the content, taxonomy, redirects, alias patterns all have been coming through flawlessly. I cannot however seem to get the path right for my public files to migrate at all.

I am using Acquia Dev Desktop, which by default sets the file path for the D8 site to sites/"your-website".dd/files in /admin/config/media/file-system as they have essentially 2 paths to get to your site files. I have changed this in the settings.php to sites/default/files which did not fix the problem. The Drupal 7 site files are on my local machine, and that site is a dev site also on Acquia dev desktop. The Drupal 7 site has the path set to sites/default/files in /admin/config/media/file-system.

When using the full local path :C:\Users\user\Documents\mywebsite\sites\default\files I am getting the following pattern, which makes me think that the files are not being recognized properly in the directory as I am not seeing the slashes in the path:

Source ID 1701: File '//sitesdefaultfilesschematicsimagesah-00-3.5.JPG' does not exist

When using sites/default/filesor sites/default/files/I am getting a double slash in the path when it shows the results sites/default/files//*

Source ID 1701: File 'sites/default/files//schematics/images/ah-00-3.5.JPG' does not exist

Here is my question. What path should I be using, and is the Migrate Drupal UI designed to get the files and move them just by setting the public path for source files, or should i be manually moving the files (copy/pasting) into the D8 directory in conjunction with setting the source file public path in the UI to properly reference them?

I would really like to sort out if it's possible to migrate my files through the UI as I am not very savy with drush.

Answer 1

So it turns out though I had difficulty understanding them, the directions are "correct". The difficulty I had is partly because of my inexperience, but it's also partly because of a slightly confusing UX in Migrate Drupal UI. The label is asking for your "Public files directory", but what it really wants is your absolute docroot path. The directions state this: "To import from you current Drupal Site,enter a local file directory containing your site (e.g /var/www/docroot), or your site address (for example http://example.com)"

This means when the source files UI is asking for the "public files directory", the sites/default/files portion is already assumed by Drupal Migrate and is not needed, nor is it welcome. I used C:\Users\user\Documents\mywebsite and it worked the first try, where repeated attempts that included \sites\default\files path failed.

Also, the unique settings in settings.php from Acquia dev desktop for the public file path for the new Drupal 8 site were not a factor. I left those settings as they were by default when I executed the migration.