Docs: Content Import and Export

Fri, 11 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

All Stroom content can be exported to a file and conversely imported from a file. Multiple entities can be exported in the same file.

Stroom exports take the form of a zip file containing the exported form of each entity. Each entity will have at least two files within the zip file. These zip files are sometimes known as Content Packs as they are essentially a pack of Stroom content.

Stroom has a number of off-the-shelf content packs available for download and import. There are packs for such things as XML schemas and standard pipelines/translations. These can be found at github.com/gchq/stroom-content and github.com/gchq/stroom-visualisations-dev .

Exporting Content

Content can be exported using two methods:

Via the main menu:

Tools

Export
Selecting one or more items in the explorer tree then clicking Export from the right-click context menu.

Export

From the dialog that is displayed, the user can select which items to include in the import. On clicking OK a confirmation dialog will be displayed confirming the number of items that will be exported, including a breakdown of counts by document type.

The export will be written to a file called StroomConfig.zip that will typically be located in the Downloads directory on the users computer.

Warning

The import/export file format has changed across different versions of Stroom. Stroom aims to support the import of older formats but older versions of Stroom may not be able to import a file exported by a newer version of Stroom.

Importing Content

Content can be imported using two methods:

Via the main menu:

Tools

Import
Right clicking anywhere in the explorer tree and clicking:

Import

Importing Content via API

It is possible to import content programmatically via Stroom’s API. This involves a two-step process:

Upload the content pack zip file to stroom, where it will be written to a temporary file on the Stroom server.
Perform the import of the temporary file, referencing it using a resource key.

The process is as follows:

# This uploads the file to the stroom host and saves it in a temporary file
curl \
  -c /tmp/cookie.txt \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer ${TOKEN}" \
  -F "encoding=multipart/form-data" \
  -F fileUpload="@/some/path/myContent.zip" \
  -X POST \
  https://<stroom FQDN>/importfile.rpc

This will write session information to /tmp/cookie.txt (which must not exist beforehand) and return the resource key details:

#PM#success=true name=myContent.zip key=1c04efc6-1c3b-4ce2-9788-74c8b224c864#PM#

From this you will need to extract the key and name parts to use in the next request.

Create the JSON request /some/path/importRequest.json:

{
  "confirmList": [],
  "importSettings": {
    "importMode": "CREATE_CONFIRMATION"
  },
  "resourceKey": {
    "key": "<the key>",
    "name": "<the name>"
  }
}

The above is the bare minimum needed for a default import. For full details of the request format see swagger

# This performs the import
curl \
  -b /tmp/cookie.txt \
  -X POST \
  -H "Authorization:Bearer $TOKEN" \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  --data @'/some/path/importRequest.json' \
  "https://<stroom FQDN>/api/content/v1/import"

The above steps can be done in one simple step using this bash script:

#!/usr/bin/env bash

# Script to import a single Stroom content pack ZIP file into Stroom.
# Requires that the environment variable TOKEN is set with either a
# valid API Key or an OAuth token.
# Usage:
# import_content.sh CONTENT_ZIP_FILE [URL_BASE]
# e.g. import_content.sh /some/path/StroomConfig.zip
# e.g. import_content.sh /some/path/StroomConfig.zip https://stroom.some.domain

set -e -o pipefail

main() {
  local content_zip_file="${1:?content_zip_file must be provided}"; shift

  local url_base
  if [[ $# -gt 0 ]]; then
    url_base="${1}"; shift
  else
    url_base="http://localhost:8080"
    echo "Using default URL base '${url_base}'"
  fi

  local cookie_file
  # dry-run so we don't create the file, else curl will error
  cookie_file="$( mktemp --dry-run "/tmp/request_cookie.XXXXXXXXXX" )"

  echo "Uploading file '${content_zip_file}' to a temporary file"
  
  local response1
  response1="$( \
    curl \
      --silent \
      --cookie-jar "${cookie_file}" \
      --header "Authorization: Bearer ${TOKEN:? Set TOKEN env var with API key or Oauth token}" \
      --form "encoding=multipart/form-data" \
      --form fileUpload="@${content_zip_file}" \
      --request POST \
      "${url_base}/importfile.rpc" \
  )"

  echo "File uploaded"

  local key
  key="$( \
    grep \
      --only-matching \
      --perl-regexp \
      '(?<=key=)[^ #]+' \
      <<< "${response1}"
  )"

  # name is only really used for logging purposes in stroom, but provide
  # it anyway
  local name
  name="$( \
    grep \
      --only-matching \
      --perl-regexp \
      '(?<=name=)[^ #]+' \
      <<< "${response1}"
  )"

  local import_request
  import_request="{ \"confirmList\": [], \"importSettings\": { \"importMode\": \"IGNORE_CONFIRMATION\" }, \"resourceKey\": { \"key\": \"${key}\", \"name\": \"${name}\" }  }"

  echo "Importing content"

  # Not interested in the response
  curl \
    --silent \
    --cookie "${cookie_file}" \
    --request POST \
    --header "Authorization:Bearer ${TOKEN:? Set TOKEN env var with API key or Oauth token}" \
    --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
    --data "${import_request}" \
    "${url_base}/api/content/v1/import" \
    > /dev/null

  echo "Content imported successfully"
  echo "Done!"
}

cleanup() {
  if [[ -f "${cookie_file}" ]]; then
    rm "${cookie_file}"
  fi
}

trap cleanup EXIT
trap cleanup SIGINT

main "$@"

Stroom – import

Docs: Content Import and Export

Exporting Content

Warning

Importing Content

Importing Content via API