So, how? How can I take my data with me as a back-up and leave? How can I migrate and upload that back-up to another instance, saving me from resubbing to a plethora of disparate communities repeatedly should I wish?
Unfortunately, there’s no export/import functionality yet, that’s coming soon.
Migrating does involve re-subbing to all your communities. The way I did it is I had both accounts open in 2 different windows and went down the list. Took me maybe 20 minutes.
There is a Lemmy API hosted on each instance (its how the UI works) but it’s pretty technical. There is an open ticket to add an easier backup / importing feature on the lemmy github.
https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/506 . The devs are open to pull requests if you have the ability to make the change yourself and want it faster.
Additionally, it might be the sort of thing where someone could make a third party app to the hard parts for you.
Depending on how authentication works, it could be just a webapp, through which you login using your lemmy credentials, which then uses the API to collect all of your data and download it from your browser.
Why would you third party for an open source project? Just add your function directly in the source
All sorts of reasons. Maybe you’re not up to the task of developing within the platform’s codebase (language, tech stack, general complexity). Maybe you don’t have the time but want to contribute some how.
Either way, if the API is there, it can’t hurt to develop against it. Sure, adding to the codebase is better, but if you can get around constraints by building on your own, go for it I say.
