Export and import site data

Export and import site data#

The plone.exportimport package provides support to export and import all kinds of data from and to Plone sites using an intermediate JSON format.

Most features use plone.restapi to serialize and deserialize data.

Command line utilities#

This package provides two command line utilities, plone-exporter and plone-importer.

plone-exporter#

Export content from a Plone site to a directory in the file system. You can call plone-exporter as shown.

plone-exporter [--include-revisions] <path-to-zopeconf> <site-id> <path-to-export-data>

The following command shows typical usage.

plone-exporter instance/etc/zope.conf Plone /tmp/plone_data/

By default, the revisions history (older versions of each content item) are not exported. If you do want them, add --include-revisions on the command line.

plone-importer#

Import content from a file system directory into an existing Plone site.

You can call plone-importer as shown.

plone-importer <path-to-zopeconf> <site-id> <path-to-import-data>

The following command shows typical usage.

plone-importer instance/etc/zope.conf Plone /tmp/plone_data/

Supported data#

  • Content (Dexterity content items)

    • Ordering

    • Local roles

    • Versions (when using the --include-revisions command line option)

    • Default pages

  • Principals (members and groups)

  • Relations (relationships between content items)

  • Translations (translation groups)

  • Discussions (content comments)

  • Redirects (redirect information)

Exported data structure#

Some goals of the new data structure are to:

  • support diff of exported data, and

  • have blob files near the content item that uses it.

After exporting content, at the top level directory, the following objects exist.

Name

Description

content

Directory containing content item information exported from the site

discussions.json

JSON File with discussions (comments) exported from the site

principals.json

JSON File with members and groups exported from the site

redirects.json

JSON File with redirect information exported from the site

relations.json

JSON File with content relations exported from the site

translations.json

JSON File with translation groups exported from the site

Content directory structure#

The content directory contains all content items exported from the site. Each content item has its own subdirectory, named with the UID of the content, including the serialized data and all blob files related to this content.

One special case is the directory for the Plone Site object, which is named plone_site_root.

Name

Description

content/__metadata__.json

JSON File with metadata information about the exported content

content/<content uid>

Directory with serialization for a content item

content/plone_site_root

Directory with serialization for the Plone Site Root

Content item directory structure#

Consider a File content item with UID 3e0dd7c4b2714eafa1d6fc6a1493f953 and a PDF file named plone.pdf (added in the file field), the exported directory will have the following structure.

Name

Description

content/3e0dd7c4b2714eafa1d6fc6a1493f953/data.json

JSON File with serialized representation of a content item

content/3e0dd7c4b2714eafa1d6fc6a1493f953/file/plone.pdf

Blob file stored in the file field in the content item
Contents