A better and easier way of importing/exporting flows and credentials (Backup and restore)

Feature Requests
1

Hello,

This is a very important point and should be at the core of n8n.

I noticed while working with n8n ‘the self-hosted’ the importing/exporting of flows (Backup and restore) is good but for basic flows or if we have few numbers, but how we can handle the below scenarios:

  • If we have +50 flows
  • If we have +50 app credentials
  • If some flows are related to each other and linked (e.g. flow a related to flow b and so on)

It would be great if we had an easy way of handling the above scenario and reducing the complexity of this process.

2

The easiest way is to backup the database, as n8n stores all workflows and credentials data there. You only have to save the encryption key somewhere to decrypt it later

3

Hi @barn4k,

Thanks a lot for your suggestion but this is not the easy way at all because of the below:

  • Suppose that I’m not a technical person, how could I do that?
  • How to do this with different DB used (e.g. SQLite or PostgresDB)?
  • How to do this with different installations for n8n (e.g. npm, docker, server, … etc.)?

What I hope to see is something really simple for non-tech to do backup and restore without complications.

1 Like
4

Yeah, I’m running into this issue right now. Trying to find out how to import credentials into a new instance.

5

@solomon have you tried using the cli which lets you export and import all or selected workflows and credentials?

1 Like
6

After tweaking my workflow a little I got it working!
Will post a template later =) Thanks!

7

@solomon
I encountered the same issue. Could you share your template? Thank you!

8

This is the workflow to backup your credentials to GitHub.

To import the credentials you can create a simple workflow and use the N8N node action called “Create credential”

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You can pull the files from GitHub and import the credentials. It works pretty well.

4 Likes
9

@solomon
Thank you for sharing the workflow, but it doesn’t work on n8n cloud. I haven’t found a solution yet.

10

Is there a quick video for this as it can help a lot.

11

Take a look at this new template:

If you have the self-hosted version, this will work well with my backup template

3 Likes
12

Many thanks for this. I have the self-hosted so I will definitely test it.

2 Likes