For CSV you can use Data Explorer, to export the results of a query. We can easily install that for you and create an initial query if you let us know what your spec is for it.
Are you looking for a CSV containing post bodies and links to posts or is this just a category overview?
I have a potential client who is a hosted customer who wants to merge data from Ning to his existing Discourse instance. This seems like a way to do that.
I donât see attachments mentioned as part of what gets exported, but it seems like if it didnât include attachments it wouldnât be very useful.
This seems to work differently for Multisites. Not sure how to do it though. I was a bit surprised to use DISCOURSE_DB_NAME and it worked⌠Then during import I understood it was only to (re-)import data already present on this very same site! Using RAILS_DB at least seems to break, so itâs on the right path. 
Any more up-to-date documentation on this. Maybe if @hawk shows us how to write a run-book with Discourse we can have that one available!
Exporting and importing from a multisite setup will need RAILS_DB.
RAILS_ENV=production RAILS_DB=sitename bundle exec script/discourse export_category 1
RAILS_ENV=production RAILS_DB=othersite bundle exec script/discourse import_category ...
How does it break?
Thank you for your help @neil!
Thereâs an (unrelated) error message:
/var/www/discourse/app/models/topic_tracking_state.rb:249: warning: circular argument reference - archive_user_id
Then the category-export file is empty: {"categories":[],"groups":[],"topics":[],"users":null}
I tried with RAILS_DB=sitename where entries in data.yml are like sitename: followed by the list of pups commands, addressing a database name thatâs different. I tried adding DISCOURSE_DB_NAME as well without result. I got the category_id from the Rails console: Category.find_by_name('Example Name').id
Thatâs only a warning. The output should look like this:
Starting export of categories...
/var/www/discourse/app/models/topic_tracking_state.rb:249: warning: circular argument reference - archive_user_id
Topic title here
Another topic title
Export saved to category-export-2018-03-19-142232.json
Done
Whatâs your output?
Hi @neil, sorry I didnât respond, I was swamped under the workload but now itâs over and I may start looking into it again, although I donât really have a reason anymore. It might be some time before it happens though. Just notifying the topic so others can take over if they encounter the same difficulties.
Slightly related question - is there any way to extract the raw text of a post from discourse, rather than a cooked string?
I expect this can probably be done through postgres, but I was hoping there was a less hacky way
This could be used for splitting up a forum into two forums, for example when some sub-community/category wants to run its own community on a separate site, right?
, I didnât see that mentioned in the API docs