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Exporting Your Data

At Pragma CMS, we believe in Data Sovereignty. Your content belongs to you, and you should be able to move it whenever you want. We strictly avoid proprietary formats to ensure maximum portability.

Full System Export (No Lock-in)

The primary way to export your data is through the Full Backup tool found in Admin > Tools > Backup.

What is included in the export?

When you trigger a download, the CMS generates a single .zip archive containing:

  1. database.sql: A standard, human-readable SQL dump. It uses binary-safe quoting and includes both table structures and data.
  2. /media directory: All your original uploaded assets and their generated variants.
  3. /uploads directory: Any user-submitted files.

Memory-Safe Execution

Our export engine uses a Streaming SQL Dump. Instead of loading your entire database into the server's RAM, it reads and writes data row-by-row directly to the ZIP stream. This ensures that even massive sites with gigabytes of data can be exported on standard shared hosting without performance issues.

Programmatic Export (API)

If you need to export specific content for use in another application (e.g., a mobile app or a separate static site generator), you can utilize our Headless API.

By querying the /api/content endpoints, you can retrieve your entire content library in standard JSON format, compatible with any modern software ecosystem.

Relational Integrity

The SQL export automatically includes SET FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS = 0; at the beginning of the file. This ensures that you can re-import your data into a new Pragma instance or a local development environment without facing relational order errors.