Export/Import lets you backup and restore your Site and app data as a LAR (Liferay Archive). There are two primary places Export/Import is used: Sites and apps. You can learn more about exporting/importing app data in the Exporting/Importing Widget Content section. In this section, you’ll learn how to export and import content for Sites.
Backing Up and Restoring Pages and Their Content
In Site Administration → Publishing, you can find the Export and Import option for pages. If you click on Export, you see an interface for exporting your public or private pages. The Export feature exports your Site’s data as a single LAR file. Similarly, Import is a similar interface for importing public or private pages from a LAR file.
When importing data into a Site, you should use a newly created Site to avoid conflicts between the existing data and the data being imported. When exporting Site data, you can specify exactly what data should be included in the LAR:
- Site pages (you can select exactly which ones)
- Page settings
- Theme
- Theme settings
- Logo
- Application configurations
- Application content
- Archived setups
- User preferences
A LAR file can be imported into a Site on another Liferay server. You can take content from a Site in one environment (say, a development or QA environment) and move it all to a Site on another server with LARs. You can use LARs to import data onto production servers, but you should not make this a regular occurrence. If you want to regularly move pages from one server to another, you should use Liferay DXP’s staging environment. See Staging Content for Publication.
You can export LARs to use them as a backup. If you ever have to restore your Site, you must only import the latest LAR file. However, please be careful! If there’s content that exists both in the LAR and in the Site that’s importing the data, there may be a conflict, and data could be corrupted. If you want to restore a Liferay Site using a LAR file, delete the Site entirely, create a new Site with the same name as the old one, and then import the LAR file into the new Site. This way, there’s no chance for there to be a data conflict.
Some naming collisions are handled automatically. For example, a collision occurs if the LAR you’re importing and the Site both have a page with the same friendly URL. Liferay DXP resolves the collision by adding a number to the end of the friendly URL and incrementing until there’s no collision. Similarly, if importing a LAR into a Site causes a category name collision, the imported categories are automatically renamed.
Page Export Example
Here’s how the export process works:
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Go the Site Administration → Publishing.
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Click Export.
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Click Add (
).
A New Custom Export page loads, so you can choose the pages and content you want to export from your Site.
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Enter “Lunar Resort Version 1” for the Title.
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Under Pages, select public or private pages and the settings you want to export.
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Under the Content category, select All.
Note that if you select one of the Choose radio selectors or Change links, you’re given checkboxes for options to choose. The applications’ content can also be selected for export, including the Documents and Media Library, Message Boards, and Web Content assets. You can even export the theme you’re using. Finally, you can select whether the permissions for your exported pages and content are included.
Figure 1: You can configure your export options manually by selecting pages, content, and permissions.
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Click Export.
Once you click Export, the menu automatically switches to the Processes tab,
where you see the status of your exported LAR file. You can select the
Download icon () to download the
export to your local machine. Once you have the file, you can copy it to a
backup location for safekeeping or import it into another installation of
Liferay. If you must rebuild or wish to revert back to this version of your
Site, you can import this file by clicking the Import button from the
Publishing menu, browsing to it, and selecting it. You can also drag a LAR file
inside the dotted area, which also executes the import process.
Export Templates
Instead of manually customizing an export process every time you export pages/content, you can use an Export Template. This provides you the convenience of storing export process settings so they can be reused. If you export pages frequently and usually select the same options to export, you can create an export template to export with your standard options.
To create an export template,
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Select the Options icon (
) from the top right corner of the screen and select Export Templates.
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Click the Add button (
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Assign the template a Name and Description.
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Fill out the configuration options for your export process.
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Click Save.
Your template is now available to use from the Export Templates menu. To use the template,
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Click the Actions (
) next to the template.
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Select Export.
This automatically fills the fields and options for exporting pages and their content.
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Give the export a name.
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Click Export and your LAR file is generated.