Importing and Exporting Realms

An overview about how to import and export realms

In this guide, you are going to understand the different approaches for importing and exporting realms using JSON files.

Exporting and importing into single files can produce large files, so if your database contains more than 500 users, export to a directory and not a single file. Using a directory performs better as the directory provider uses a separate transaction for each "page" (a file of users). The default count of users per file and per transaction is fifty. Increasing this to a larger number leads to an exponentially increasing execution time.

All Keycloak nodes need to be stopped prior to using kc.[sh|bat] import | export commands. This ensures that the resulting operations will have no consistency issues with concurrent requests. It also ensures that running an import or export command from the same machine as a server instance will not result in port or other conflicts.

Providing options for database connection parameters

When using the export and the import commands below, Keycloak needs to know how to connect to the database where the information about realms, clients, users and other entities is stored. As described in Configuring Keycloak that information can be provided as command line parameters, environment variables or a configuration file. Use the --help command line option for each command to see the available options.

Some of the configuration options are build time configuration options. As default, Keycloak will re-build automatically for the export and import commands if it detects a change of a build time parameter.

If you have built an optimized version of Keycloak with the build command as outlined in Configuring Keycloak, use the command line option --optimized to have Keycloak skip the build check for a faster startup time. When doing this, remove the build time options from the command line and keep only the runtime options.

if you do not use --optimized keep in mind that an import or export command will implicitly create or update an optimized image for you - if you are running the command from the same machine as a server instance, this may impact the next start of your server.

Exporting a Realm to a Directory

To export a realm, you can use the export command. Your Keycloak server instance must not be started when invoking this command.

bin/kc.[sh|bat] export --help

To export a realm to a directory, you can use the --dir <dir> option.

bin/kc.[sh|bat] export --dir <dir>

When exporting realms to a directory, the server is going to create separate files for each realm being exported.

Configuring how users are exported

You are also able to configure how users are going to be exported by setting the --users <strategy> option. The values available for this option are:

different_files

Users export into different json files, depending on the maximum number of users per file set by --users-per-file. This is the default value.

skip

Skips exporting users.

realm_file

Users will be exported to the same file as the realm settings. For a realm named "foo", this would be "foo-realm.json" with realm data and users.

same_file

All users are exported to one explicit file. So you will get two json files for a realm, one with realm data and one with users.

If you are exporting users using the different_files strategy, you can set how many users per file you want by setting the --users-per-file option. The default value is 50.

bin/kc.[sh|bat] export --dir <dir> --users different_files --users-per-file 100

Exporting a Realm to a File

To export a realm to a file, you can use the --file <file> option.

bin/kc.[sh|bat] export --file <file>

When exporting realms to a file, the server is going to use the same file to store the configuration for all the realms being exported.

Exporting a specific realm

If you do not specify a specific realm to export, all realms are exported. To export a single realm, you can use the --realm option as follows:

bin/kc.[sh|bat] export [--dir|--file] <path> --realm my-realm

Importing a Realm from a Directory

To import a realm, you can use the import command. Your Keycloak server instance must not be started when invoking this command.

bin/kc.[sh|bat] import --help

After exporting a realm to a directory, you can use the --dir <dir> option to import the realm back to the server as follows:

bin/kc.[sh|bat] import --dir <dir>

When importing realms using the import command, you are able to set if existing realms should be skipped, or if they should be overridden with the new configuration. For that, you can set the --override option as follows:

bin/kc.[sh|bat] import --dir <dir> --override false

By default, the --override option is set to true so that realms are always overridden with the new configuration.

Importing a Realm from a File

To import a realm previously exported in a single file, you can use the --file <file> option as follows:

bin/kc.[sh|bat] import --file <file>

Using Environment Variables within the Realm Configuration Files

You are able to use placeholders to resolve values from environment variables for any realm configuration.

Realm configuration using placeholders
{
    "realm": "${MY_REALM_NAME}",
    "enabled": true,
    ...
}

In the example above, the value set to the MY_REALM_NAME environment variable is going to be used to set the realm property.

Importing a Realm during Startup

You are also able to import realms when the server is starting by using the --import-realm option.

bin/kc.[sh|bat] start --import-realm

When you set the --import-realm option, the server is going to try to import any realm configuration file from the data/import directory. Only regular files using the .json extension are read from this directory, sub-directories are ignored.

For the Keycloak containers, the import directory is /opt/keycloak/data/import

If a realm already exists in the server, the import operation is skipped. The main reason behind this behavior is to avoid re-creating realms and potentially lose state between server restarts.

To re-create realms you should explicitly run the import command prior to starting the server.

Importing and Exporting by using the Admin Console

You can also import and export a realm using the Admin Console. This functionality is different from the other CLI options described in previous sections because the Admin Console offers only the capability to partially export a realm. In this case, the current realm settings, along with some resources like clients, roles, and groups, can be exported. The users for that realm cannot be exported using this method.

When using the Admin Console export, the realm and the selected resources are always exported to a file named realm-export.json. Also, all sensitive values like passwords and client secrets will be masked with * symbols.

To export a realm using the Admin Console, perform these steps:

  1. Select a realm.

  2. Click Realm settings in the menu.

  3. Point to the Action menu in the top right corner of the realm settings screen, and select Partial export.

    A list of resources appears along with the realm configuration.

  4. Select the resources you want to export.

  5. Click Export.

Realms exported from the Admin Console are not suitable for backups or data transfer between servers. Only CLI exports are suitable for backups or data transfer between servers.
If the realm contains many groups, roles, and clients, the operation may cause the server to be unresponsive to user requests for a while. Use this feature with caution, especially on a production system.

In a similar way, you can import a previously exported realm. Perform these steps:

  1. Click Realm settings in the menu.

  2. Point to the Action menu in the top right corner of the realm settings screen, and select Partial import.

    A prompt appears where you can select the file you want to import. Based on this file, you see the resources you can import along with the realm settings.

  3. Click Import.

You can also control what Keycloak should do if the imported resource already exists. These options exist:

Fail import

Abort the import.

Skip

Skip the duplicate resources without aborting the process

Overwrite

Replace the existing resources with the ones being imported.

The Admin Console partial import can also import files created by the CLI export command. In other words, full exports created by the CLI can be imported by using the Admin Console. If the file contains users, those users will also be available for importing into the current realm.
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