Bundle format

Archive Bundle Format v1. A bundle is a ZIP file; everything inside it is plain text or a copied asset file, and nothing in it needs Craft to read.

my-site-2026-07-26-140233.zip
├── manifest.json            always JSON, whatever the chosen format
├── README.txt               human-readable description of this bundle's layout
├── data/
│   └── archive.json         the master data file, in the chosen format
│       (or archive.ndjson / archive.xml / archive.yaml, or a csv/ directory)
└── assets/
    └── <volumeHandle>/<path>/<filename>   copied files from local volumes only

The site’s structure lives inside the master data file under schema — sites, sections, entry types, field definitions, category and tag groups, volumes, filesystems, global sets, user groups with their permissions, routes, the installed plugin list, and a curated set of system settings. Formats that can’t nest, like CSV, put it in a schema/ directory instead.

Filesystems are described by name and type only. Their settings are never exported: that’s where an S3 or Spaces filesystem keeps its access key and secret, and a bundle is a file people email each other.

manifest.json

{
  "archiveFormatVersion": "1.0",
  "generatedAt": "2026-07-26T14:02:33+00:00",
  "generator": {
    "plugin": "Archive",
    "pluginVersion": "1.0.0",
    "craftVersion": "5.10.0",
    "phpVersion": "8.2.20"
  },
  "source": {
    "systemName": "My Site",
    "primarySiteUrl": "https://example.com",
    "sites": [
      { "handle": "default", "name": "My Site", "language": "en-US",
        "primary": true, "baseUrl": "https://example.com" }
    ]
  },
  "format": "json",
  "dataFiles": ["data/archive.json"],
  "contents": { "entries": 128, "categories": 9 },
  "assets": {
    "included": 42, "referenced": 7, "skipped": 1, "bytes": 18452113,
    "files": ["assets/images/hero.jpg", "…"]
  },
  "options": { "…the export options used…" },
  "warnings": ["…anything Archive could not fully represent…"]
}

contents is the authoritative record count per type. warnings is where a field type with no serializer, an unreadable asset, or a skipped oversize file gets reported — an empty array means the export was complete.

Records

A record is one element in one site. Records from the same element share a uid and differ by site, which is how translations stay linkable without nesting.

{
  "uid": "3f2b9a1c-…",
  "id": 412,
  "type": "entry",
  "sourceClass": "craft\elements\Entry",
  "site": "default",
  "siteId": 1,
  "language": "en-US",

  "title": "Hello world",
  "slug": "hello-world",
  "uri": "news/hello-world",
  "url": "https://example.com/news/hello-world",
  "status": "live",
  "enabled": true,

  "container": {
    "section": "news",
    "sectionName": "News",
    "sectionType": "channel",
    "entryType": "article",
    "entryTypeName": "Article"
  },

  "author": { "uid": "…", "username": "jholt", "name": "Justin Holt" },
  "parent": { "uid": "…", "slug": "…", "title": "…" },
  "level": 1,
  "order": 3,

  "dateCreated": "2026-01-04T09:11:00+00:00",
  "dateUpdated": "2026-07-02T16:40:12+00:00",
  "postDate": "2026-01-04T09:00:00+00:00",
  "expiryDate": null,

  "fields": { … },
  "relations": [ … ]
}

Keys that don’t apply to a type are omitted rather than set to null — a category has no author or postDate, so those keys simply aren’t there.

Per type

container says where a record lived, and differs by type:

user and address records carry no site, siteId or language, because those element types have no per-site content in Craft. Every other type has one record per site.

Field values

Every entry under fields has four keys:

• kind — what the value is, in Archive’s own vocabulary. This is what an importer should switch on, and it’s stable across whichever plugin produced the field.
• type — the originating Craft field class, kept for provenance.
• typeName — that field type’s display name.
• value — plain, JSON-representable data.

raw is the honest fallback: the value still travels, it just arrives as opaque data whose shape is the originating plugin’s business. Field types from third-party plugins land here until Archive learns them — or until you teach it.

Rich text is exported with parseRefs() applied, so {asset:14:url} becomes the real URL rather than a Craft-only token.

Element references

Any pointer to another element — a relation target, an author, a parent — uses the same shape, so an importer only ever has to learn one:

{ "uid": "…", "id": 14, "type": "asset", "title": "hero.jpg",
  "url": "https://example.com/uploads/hero.jpg" }

Asset refs carry extra keys, and are the one place a bundle distinguishes local from remote — see Assets.

Relations

"relations": [
  {
    "field": "relatedEntries",
    "fieldType": "entries",
    "targets": [
      { "uid": "…", "id": 9, "type": "entry", "title": "Another post",
        "url": "https://example.com/news/another-post" }
    ]
  }
]

Relations appear both inside the field value that produced them and in the record’s top-level relations array, so an importer can walk the graph without descending into every field.

Stability

archiveFormatVersion follows semver. Additive keys are a minor bump; anything that would break a reader written against 1.x is a major bump. The full specification also ships with the plugin, at docs/FORMAT.md.