Backups

The database object provides a simple way to snapshot all collections to another directory. You can keep the original part-file layout or pack each collection into a single JSON file.

Basic backup

// Copy every collection’s part files into ./backups
const path = db.backup('./backups');
console.log('Backup written to', path);

// Async version
await db.backupAsync('./backups');

The default target is ./backups if you omit the argument. The method returns the path on success, or null on error.

What gets copied?

• Only part-*.json files
• index.json, temp files and the crash/ folder are not copied in the default mode
• Corrupted parts that cannot be parsed are skipped when packing

Packed backup

Pass { pack: true } to merge every part of a collection into one readable JSON array file:

db.backup('./exports', { pack: true });

// Result:
// exports/
//   users/
//     users.json      ← all user documents in one array
//   orders/
//     orders.json

This is convenient for exporting data to another system or for human inspection.

Typical backup layout (default mode)

backups/
├── users/
│   ├── part-0001.json
│   └── part-0002.json
└── orders/
    └── part-0001.json

Restoring

There is no dedicated restore method. To restore:

1. Stop the application (or unload the collections).
2. Replace the collection directories under your database path with the ones from the backup.
3. Restart / open the database again. The index will be rebuilt automatically if needed.

# Example restore of the users collection
rm -rf ./data/users
cp -r ./backups/users ./data/users

Events

On success the database emits a backup event:

db.on('backup', (info) => {
  console.log('Backup finished at', info.path, 'pack =', info.pack);
});