Exporting User Data

User Management practices must account for the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation. One of its tenets is that Users have a right to data portability.

Data portability means that a User has the right to receive their personal data in a machine-readable format.

The Control Panel’s User Management system now natively supports the export of a User’s personal data to a ZIP file for download. The data format for the files containing the data is XML.

Exporting and Downloading

To export user data,

  1. Go to Control Panel → Users → Users and Organizations.

  2. Find the User and click the Actions button (Actions), then click Export Personal Data.

    This opens the User’s Export Personal Data screen.

  3. If there are no existing export processes shown, there’s only one thing to do: click the Add button (Add). The tool for exporting the User’s data appears.

    Figure 1: The Export Personal Data tool lets you export all or some of the Users data.

    Figure 1: The Export Personal Data tool lets you export all or some of the User's data.

  4. Most of the time you want to export all the available data. Click Select Items, and all applications containing User data are selected in the UI.

  5. Click Export. You’re taken back to the User’s Export Personal Data screen, but now there’s an export process in the list.

    Figure 2: Once User data is successfully exported, the export process is displayed in the Users Export Personal Data list.

    Figure 2: Once User data is successfully exported, the export process is displayed in the User's Export Personal Data list.

  6. Download the data. Click the Actions button (Actions) for the process and select Download.

Examining Exported Data

So what does the exported data look like?

<?xml version="1.0"?>

<model>
    <model-name>com.liferay.message.boards.model.MBMessage</model-name>
    <column>
        <column-name>messageId</column-name>
        <column-value><![CDATA[38099]]></column-value>
    </column>
    <column>
        <column-name>statusByUserId</column-name>
        <column-value><![CDATA[38045]]></column-value>
    </column>
    <column>
        <column-name>statusByUserName</column-name>
        <column-value><![CDATA[Jane Slaughter]]></column-value>
    </column>
    <column>
        <column-name>userId</column-name>
        <column-value><![CDATA[38045]]></column-value>
    </column>
    <column>
        <column-name>userName</column-name>
        <column-value><![CDATA[Jane Slaughter]]></column-value>
    </column>
    <column>
        <column-name>subject</column-name>
        <column-value><![CDATA[Great list. I was thinking of bringing the family,...]]></column-value>
    </column>
    <column>
        <column-name>body</column-name>
        <column-value><![CDATA[<p>Great list. I was thinking of bringing the family, but I don&#39;t
  actually believe humans have ever been to the moon, so I guess it
  would be silly to book a trip! LOL!</p>]]></column-value>
    </column>
</model>

In this example, User Jane Slaughter made a Message Boards Message post, and her User information was recorded in the MBMessage model’s database table.

This actually corresponds with a comment on a Blogs Entry:

Figure 3: A Comment on a blog post is User Associated Data.

Figure 3: A Comment on a blog post is User Associated Data.

Exporting User data informs Site owners and Users about how much personal data the sight may have.

« Sanitizing User DataUser Groups »
Was this article helpful?
0 out of 0 found this helpful