Filtering Archive and Copy Contents
- Last Updated: June 24, 2026
- 2 minute read
- MarkLogic Server
- Version 11.0
- Documentation
This section covers options available for controlling what is exported by mlcp export when -output_type is archive, or what is copied by the mlcp copy command.
By default, all documents and metadata are exported/copied. The following options allow you to modify this behavior:
-
-directory_filter- export/copy only the documents in the listed database directories, including related metadata. You cannot use this option with-collection_filteror-document_selector. -
-collection_filter- export/copy only the documents in the listed collections, including related metadata. You cannot use this option with-directory_filteror-document_selector. -
-document_selector- export/copy only documents selected by the specified XPath expression. You cannot use this option with-directory_filteror-collection_filter. Use-path_namespaceto define namespace prefixes. -
-query_filter- export/copy only documents matched by the specified cts query. You can use this option alone or in combination with a directory, collection or document selector filter. Results may not be accurate; for details, see Understanding When Filters Are Accurate. -
-copy_collections- whether to include collection metadata -
-copy_permissions- whether to include permissions metadata -
-copy_properties- whether to include naked and document properties -
-copy_quality- whether to include document quality metadata -
-copy_metadata- whether to include document key-value metadata
If you set all the -copy_* options to false when exporting to an archive, the archive contains no metadata. When you import an archive with no metadata, you must set -archive_metadata_optional to true.
Note:
When filtering with a document selector, the XPath filtering expression should select fragment roots only. An XPath expression that selects nodes below the root is very inefficient.
When using -document_selector to filter by XPath expression, you can define namespace prefixes using the -path_namespace option. For example:
-path_namespace 'ex1,http://marklogic.com/example,ex2,http://my/ex2'
-document_selector '/ex1:elem[ex2:attr > 10]'