XWiki migration: preserving users, permissions and page metadata (without history)

Help / Discuss
1

Hi everyone,

I’m looking for advice on migrating data between XWiki instances.

We’ve been using XWiki for several years. During this time we:

  • upgraded across multiple versions,

  • tested various extensions,

  • and eventually accumulated quite a few dependency issues that now make further upgrades difficult.

We’ve decided to set up a new “clean” instance and migrate the following:

  • all spaces (with content),

  • all users,

  • access rights (page / space permissions).

The goal is to start fresh with only the necessary extensions and updated security policies.

Important clarification:

  • we do NOT need full history,

  • we only need to preserve:

    • the original creator / last editor,

    • the original creation and last modification timestamps.

Problem:
The standard export (XAR / space export) does not work for us because during import:

  • the author is replaced with the current user,

  • timestamps are overwritten.

Questions:

  1. Is there a way to export/import data while preserving:

    • original creator / last author,

    • original creation / modification timestamps?

  2. Can this be achieved via configuration, or does it require a custom approach (e.g., using the REST API)?

  3. What would be the recommended best practice for this kind of migration (without history, but with correct metadata)?

Any advice or real-world experience would be greatly appreciated

2

Have you already tried to export your data with “with history” disabled, and then import it using “import as backup package”?

If I don’t misunderstand your problem, this usually achieves exactly what you’re looking for:

  • no history (clean instance)
  • but original metadata (creator, last editor, timestamps) preserved
3

Hi, thanks for the suggestion! I’ve already tried it - I exported both with the “Backup package” option enabled and without it. When importing with “Import as backup package,” the original creator/editor is preserved, but the last modified date gets reset to the export date.

4

Thanks for the clarification! In a similar case we were using a custom export/import approach based on the Filter API (similar to this example: Export a list of wiki pages as a XAR on the file system, combined with some post-processing of the generated XAR to adjust metadata but it was not about the last modified date.