Import/Export Application #

Data is the new oil. – Clive Humby

A common criticism of authentication systems is the level of control they impose on developers. Beyond the immediate concern of whether authentication data is secure, a more pressing long-term issue is whether this data can be exported—either to migrate to another authentication provider or to a self-hosted version of the Cosync Appkey server under the developer’s full control. These concerns are legitimate. Unfortunately, most authentication solutions offer little to no support for retrieving or exporting authentication data—data that, in reality, should belong to the developer, not a third party.

Cosync Appkey takes a different approach. We believe developers should own their authentication data, and our role is simply to provide a reliable and cost-effective system for authenticating FIDO2 passkeys. To that end, we allow developers to export authentication data as CSV files and use that data to create a new application under a different developer account. Additionally, passkeys generated for the original application will continue to work with the imported application, provided the relying party remains the same.

This flexibility helps ensure that developers retain full control over their authentication data. More importantly, it allows a developer to start with our low-cost hosted solution, grow their user base, and later migrate to a self-hosted deployment with minimal disruption to their users.

Exporting App Authentication Data #

With Cosync Appkey, exporting your application’s authentication data and associated passkeys is straightforward. Simply navigate to the Application Settings tab and click the Export button.

This will generate a ZIP file, named with the application ID, and save it to your downloads folder.

    appkeydemo_fgmad-database-export-5-Feb-2025.zip

If you extract this file into a directory, you will find five CSV files, as shown below.

• app-collecttion: the application settings
• app-logs: the application logs
• email-template-collection: the language templates for internationalization
• signup-collection: the user signup into the application
• user-collection: the users of the application and their FIDO2 passkey authenticators

Importing App Authentication Data #

Importing application data into a new app is just as simple as exporting it. To create a new app using the authentication data from an existing app, click the Up Arrow button next to the Create New App button, as shown below.

You will then be prompted to select the exported ZIP file to import the application data.

Once completed, your new app will include all users from the exported app.