Import / Export

Plik can export and import all metadata (users, tokens, uploads, files, settings) using the plikd CLI. This is useful for backend migrations (e.g. SQLite → PostgreSQL), backups, and disaster recovery.

WARNING

Import/export handles metadata only — file data stored in the data backend (filesystem, S3, etc.) is not included. You must separately back up or migrate the data backend contents.

Export

Dump all metadata to a file:

plikd export /path/to/export.bin

Sample output:

Exporting metadata from sqlite3 to /path/to/export.bin
exported 3 users
exported 5 tokens
exported 142 uploads
exported 287 files
exported 1 settings

The export includes soft-deleted uploads to preserve foreign key integrity. CLI auth sessions are not exported — they are ephemeral and have no value outside the running server.

Import

Load metadata from a previously exported file:

plikd import /path/to/export.bin

Sample output:

Importing metadata from /path/to/export.bin to postgres
imported 3 out of 3 uploads
imported 287 out of 287 files
imported 3 out of 3 users
imported 5 out of 5 tokens
imported 1 out of 1 settings

--ignore-errors

By default, import stops on the first error (e.g. a duplicate key). Use --ignore-errors to skip problematic records and continue:

plikd import --ignore-errors /path/to/export.bin

Failed records are logged to stdout with details.

File Format

The export file uses Go's gob encoding compressed with Snappy. This format is:

• Architecture-independent — portable across amd64, arm64, etc.
• Compact — binary encoding + compression keeps files small
• Streaming — objects are written sequentially, so memory usage stays constant regardless of database size
• Go-specific — the file cannot be read by non-Go tools