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Data export

🏗 Work in progress

The content of this page might not be fully up-to-date with Strapi 5 yet.

The strapi export command is used to export data from a local Strapi instance. By default, the strapi export command exports data as an encrypted and compressed tar.gz.enc file which includes:

  • the project configuration,
  • entities: all of your content,
  • links: relations between your entities,
  • assets: files stored in the uploads folder,
  • schemas,
  • the metadata.json file.

The following documentation details the available options to customize your data export. The export command and all of the available options are run using the Strapi CLI.

✋ Caution
  • Admin users and API tokens are not exported.
  • Media from a 3rd party provider (e.g., Cloudinary or AWS S3) are not included in the export as those files do not exist in the upload folders.

Name the export file​

Exported data are contained in a .tar file that is automatically named using the format export_YYYYMMDDHHMMSS. You can optionally name the exported file by passing the --file or -f option with the strapi export command. Do not include a file extension as one will be set automatically depending on options provided.

Example: Export data with a custom filename​

yarn strapi export --file my-strapi-export

Configure data encryption​

The default strapi export command encrypts your project data using aes-128-ecb encryption and adds the file extension .enc. To use encryption you need to pass an encryption key using the -k or --key option or enter an encryption key when prompted. The encryption key is a string with no minimum character count.

💡 Encryption keys

Strong encryption keys are encouraged to protect sensitive data in your project. OpenSSL is a resource for generating encryption keys. The following example commands generate encryption keys in a terminal:

openssl rand -base64 48

To disable encryption, pass the --no-encrypt option with the strapi export command.

Example: Export data without encryption​

yarn strapi export --no-encrypt

Example: Export data with the encryption --key option​

yarn strapi export --key my-encryption-key

Disable data compression​

The default strapi export command compresses your project data using gzip compression and adds the .gz file extension.

To disable compression, pass the --no-compress option with the strapi export command.

Example: Export data without compression​

yarn strapi export --no-compress

Export only selected types of data​

The default strapi export command exports your content (entities and relations), files (assets), project configuration, and schemas. The --only option allows you to export only the listed items by passing a comma-separated string with no spaces between the types. The available values are content, files, and config. Schemas are always exported, as schema matching is used for strapi import.

✏️ Note

Media such as images consist of the file (asset) and the entity in the database. If you use the --only flag to export content, the asset database records are still included, and could render as broken links.

Example: Export only entities and relations​


yarn strapi export --only content

Exclude items from export​

The default strapi export command exports your content (entities and relations), files (assets), project configuration, and schemas. The --exclude option allows you to exclude content, files, and the project configuration by passing these items in a comma-separated string with no spaces between the types. You can't exclude the schemas, as schema matching is used for strapi import.

✏️ Note

Media such as images consist of the file (asset) and the entity in the database. If you use the --exclude flag to remove assets, the database records are still included, and could render as broken links.

Example: Export data excluding assets, entities, and relations​

yarn strapi export --exclude files,content