Question: how to export existing site to xml for use by this library

[nicerloop]

Hi,

I have an existing Liferay Portal, living in database, and would like to export it as xml in order to consume it with this library. Can you give me some pointers?

[ktor]

Hi @nicerloop,

you can export Liferay data in LAR format (zipped xml) with standard Liferay tooling and import it with standard Liferay tooling as well.

The liferay-db-setup-core library however does not consume LAR format. The same goes the other way around. What is your use case? Is it backup?

[nicerloop]

Hi,

LAR export is not supported between Liferay versions, and will not evolve anymore (https://learn.liferay.com/dxp/latest/en/installation-and-upgrades/upgrading-liferay/reference/maintenance-mode-and-deprecations-in-7-3.html).

I would like to have my portal contents versioned as source, to deploy it without hassle in different contexts, flowing through different Liferay versions. But I would rather avoid re-authoring the existing content (multiple Liferay sites, complex contents, various environments) and have/get/build a way to export it to a versionable format.

This library seems to handle the implementation of an xml-described site into Liferay, I need the reverse operation to close the loop.

[ktor]

The feature is currently not supported but I could use it as well, especially for user created content like articles/pages. I imagine this could very well be developed organically.

For example I currently need basic site pages/configuration dump and I was going to write declarations manually but writing a dump tool seems to be a better idea and I could reuse it on other projects as well.

Let's say:

InputStream LiferaySetupDump#site(Long siteId)
InputStream LiferaySetupDump#article(Long articleId)
InputStream LiferaySetupDump#categories(Long vocabularyId)

What would be your idea of a dump API?

[nicerloop]

I'm quite new into Liferay, been discovering the product for some weeks with this project I'm newly involved with, so I'd imagine naively the reverse of the setup() methods: Setup LiferaySetup#dump(), or to allow for big sites, InputStream LiferaySetup#dump().

I currently do not master Liferay enough to suggest anything else, as I am in the process of researching how to make the current situation more manageable on the Liferay contents side.

Having a global view of the contents, even as a massive XML file, is a first step to managing the contents.

Alternatively, could the contents be dumped by parts following their nature, and be joined in a parent XML setup file following the XSD using XInclude?