Exporting Members Without Admin API

Ghost has a nice built in option to export members as shown here:

This is very simple to use. Unfortunately, it is severely limited in the data it exports. It is nowhere near the actual member database stored in the admin API.

The Complete Member Database

This document provides a demonstration of the actual member database:

Using the Admin API, there are additional fields. Is there any reason these fields can only be exported using the admin API? It doesn’t make sense to me. I understand the admin API is easy for engineers, but many users are not engineers.

There is a button marked “export members”. Why does it exclude the other categories?

My goal: Be able to export the entire member list with all the fields shown in the API, but without being forced to use the API endpoints.

Alternative: Can someone share the exact code (with admin key replaced by filler) they ran on a platform like cloudflare or n8n to do this? I would think this is something many admins with more coding expertise have done. But the documents on how to use the admin API don’t demonstrate the code structure someone would actually use.

I recently made a script to sync member data to a Google Sheet with attribution fields included. I couldn’t find any shortcuts; it makes a separate API request for every single member. It ain’t fast, but it works. GitHub - elidickinson/ghost-sync-google-sheets: Sync all Ghost member data (including attribution) into a Google Sheet with this Apps Script template

2 Likes

Agree about the lack of fields in the export. My site is hosted with Magic Pages, and Jannis was nice enough to do a custom export for me. But, I think it’s not fair to ask him to do that whenever I want to update my analysis. I don’t see why the export feature is so limited.

You are amazing. I’m going through this code to see how it works. No problem with it taking time. It’s a way to make the system work and you’ve built it into a proper spreadsheet program. Greatly appreciate your work here and excited to try it out.

Dug into it today. This is amazing. I think Ghost should add it to the resources document. You did an amazing job. Spent a long time making sure it was safe. You really just did a very nice thing for other people. Thank you! That interface is beautiful. Happy to send a donation via PayPal or paid sub to your site for a while to show my appreciation. This is outstanding.

2 Likes

Aw shucks. Thanks for the kind words. It was inspired by my friends at The 51st so feel free to throw them a few bucks if you’re feeling generous: Give a one-time gift

3 Likes

Just tried it. Took a while, but delivered the goods. Very impressive.

You got it. I’ll send in a donation and let them know it’s to honor your work. Thank you for creating this.

Done. Thank you, Eli. Really respect your work and that you would offer up the rewards to the 51st.

1 Like