Migrate data into Plone#
Migrating data into Plone is a common requirement, whether you are upgrading an older site or moving content from a legacy CMS. There are several strategies and tools available, each suited to different scenarios and levels of complexity.
In-place migrations (upgrades)#
Plone provides built-in upgrade mechanisms to migrate older sites to newer versions using in-place upgrades. This approach is often the simplest and fastest when your site has minimal customizations, add-ons, or content types.
For example, upgrading from Plone 5.2 (Python 3) to Plone 6 Classic is typically straightforward. However, in-place migrations can become complex when dealing with major changes, such as moving from Plone 4.3 to Plone 6.1, migrating from Archetypes to Dexterity, or implementing Volto support.
ETL add-ons and packages for Plone#
The Plone community has developed robust tools for handling migrations using the extract, transform, and load (ETL) process.
Notable solutions include, in the order of their creation, Transmogrifier, collective.exportimport, and plone.exportimport.
Transmogrifier#
Inspired by Calvin's invention in Calvin and Hobbes, collective.transmogrifier enables building configurable pipelines to transform content. It supports all three ETL phases and allows you to extract, transform, and load data independently or in combination.
Its modularity and extensibility make it powerful, but its configuration complexity can present a steep learning curve.
collective.exportimport#
Created by Philip Bauer, collective.exportimport leverages years of migration experience. It can be installed on Plone sites (version 4 and above) to export data to JSON, applying some transformations during export. The exported data can then be imported into a target Plone site using the same add-on.
Developers can extend its functionality by subclassing base classes for custom extraction, transformation, or loading logic.
plone.exportimport#
plone.exportimport is a slimmer version of collective.exportimport.
While collective.exportimport supports older Plone versions and Python 2, and also takes care of data conversion from Archetypes to Dexterity, plone.exportimport focuses only on latest Plone and Python.
It offers a predictable directory structure and a clear contract for importing data into Plone.
This makes it easier for developers and integrators to move data between recent Plone sites.
In Plone 6.0.x versions, plone.exportimport was a separate add-on.
It became a Plone core package in 6.1.0.