Portability

Audience: administrators moving or backing up a whole Aperture model.

export and import are the declarative-state commands: export serializes the entire model to a single JSON/YAML state file, and import applies such a file back as an idempotent, transactional upsert. Both are system-admin tier and drive exactly the path the Twirp Export / Import RPCs drive, so they need an acting principal via --principal (or APERTURE_PRINCIPAL) and --account for authority resolution:

export APERTURE_PRINCIPAL=root

export — serialize the whole model

aperture export [options]

export writes the full model to stdout by default, or to --out <path>. The format is JSON unless you pass --format yaml (or --out a .yaml/.yml path). Writing to a file prints a one-line summary; writing to stdout emits the raw document.

# To stdout as JSON:
bin/aperture export --account acme --principal root > model.json

# To a YAML file (format inferred from the extension):
bin/aperture export --account acme --principal root --out model.yaml

exported <model summary> -> model.yaml

Full flags: export.

import — apply a state file

aperture import [options]

import reads a state file from --file <path> or, when no file is given, from stdin (treated as JSON). It applies the document as an idempotent upsert in one transaction — re-importing the same file is a no-op — and prints a one-line summary. The file format is inferred from the --file extension.

# From a file:
bin/aperture import --account acme --principal root --file model.yaml

# From stdin (JSON):
bin/aperture export --account acme --principal root \
  | bin/aperture import --account acme --principal root

imported <model summary>

Round-tripping through export | import — or between two --store DSNs — is the supported way to snapshot, back up, or migrate a model. Because both ends run as a system-admin actor scoped to --account, no cross-account data crosses the boundary implicitly.

Full flags: import.

Related

• Global options — --principal / --account / --store for the source/target store.
• Provisioning — apply incremental grants rather than a whole model.
• Mutations — single-entity edits.
• Command-Line Reference — the generated flag tables.