Export, import and backup

A deck is yours alone: no deck under exercises/ is kept in git, so a deck moves from one machine to another — or to another person — as a zip file. There are two kinds of zip, for two different jobs:

An export

is one deck, made to be given: to your other computer, or to a friend who should start it fresh.

A backup

is every deck at once, made to be put back: after a new installation, or on the day something went wrong.

1. Exporting a deck#

Export ▾ on a deck’s page — or the ⋯ menu on its card on the decks page — offers two versions:

The browser saves the file as it saves any download, and the Working… pill in the corner says Exporting the deck … while Parseh packs it.

Both hold the same things:

• parseh-exercise-deck.json, the manifest: the deck’s id, name, language and options;
• every exercise, under items/, with its tags and where it came from;
• the pictures the exercises use, under images/, and the recordings, under audio/;
• and, in the version with scheduling, schedule/: each exercise’s state and its whole history of answers.

Only the pictures and recordings an exercise names travel: a file the deck holds but no exercise uses any more stays behind. (A backup, below, takes everything.)

2. Importing a deck#

Import deck… on the decks page takes such a zip. Choose the file, and a dialog asks one question:

• Keep the scheduling saved in the file — ticked by default. Unticked, every exercise starts again as new. A zip exported without scheduling starts new whatever the tick says.

Import adds the deck under its own name and language, with its options, and says what came in: Imported “Everyday Persian”: 8 exercises, with its scheduling (or all new). While a large file goes up, the Working… pill says Importing the deck ….

Each exercise is checked on the way in, exactly as one added by hand: one that is not a single sound exercise in the deck’s language is skipped and counted — 8 exercises, 1 skipped (not a valid exercise) — and the rest still come in.

A deck that is already here#

A deck keeps its id through export and import, so Parseh knows when the zip is a deck you already have — your own deck coming back from the other machine, say. Then it asks:

This deck is already here — A deck with this id is already here: “Everyday Persian”. Replace it moves the deck that is here to exercises/.trash/ and puts the imported one in its place; a copy keeps both.

Replace it

moves the deck that is here to exercises/.trash/ (so nothing is lost) and puts the imported one at the same address: bookmarks of it keep working.

Import as a copy

keeps both. The new one gets an id of its own and its name followed by (copy): Everyday Persian (copy).

Cancel

imports nothing.

What an import refuses#

The whole file is refused, with the reason, when it is not a deck export:

• a file that is not a zip at all — this is not a deck export: the file is not a zip;
• a zip holding anything but a deck’s files — unexpected entry in the zip: … (a backup is such a zip: it goes to Load from backup, not here);
• a file under audio/ that is not a recording, or one larger than 30 MB; a picture larger than 15 MB;
• more than 512 MB in all, once unpacked, or more than 20,000 files.

(The studio run on its own, without the rest of Parseh, also refuses an upload larger than 32 MB.)

3. Backing up every deck#

Backup, at the top of the decks page, downloads every deck on the shelf as one zip, exercises-backup-20260921-1427.zip (the date and time it was made). The Working… pill says Packing the backup of every deck while it is being made.

A backup is not a pile of exports. It is made to be put back exactly:

A picture no exercise names today is often one you unlinked yesterday and will want tomorrow: an export leaves it out on purpose, a backup must not. The decks in exercises/.trash/ are not backed up.

4. Loading a backup#

Load from backup takes the zip that Backup made. The button says Restoring… while the file goes up, and the Working… pill says Restoring the decks from …. A shelf of decks with their recordings can be large: Parseh writes the file to the disk as it arrives rather than holding it in memory, and takes a backup of up to 512 MB once unpacked.

Every deck in the backup that is not here is put back as it was — its id, its address (or a free one, if another deck has taken it since), its options, its pictures and recordings, and all its answers.

A deck that is already here — the same id, in the same language — is kept as it is, and the page asks about it:

2 decks already here — the names — left exactly as they are. Replacing them puts the backup’s copy in their place, and anything written or studied since the backup was made is lost. The backup is sent again.

Keep mine

leaves them as they are. This is usually right: the backup is usually older than the deck you have.

Replace them

sends the backup again and puts its copy in their place; each deck replaced is moved to exercises/.trash/ first.

The message at the end counts what happened: 3 decks restored, 2 left as they are. A deck of the backup that cannot be read is left out and said.

Load from backup takes only a backup: given a single deck’s export it answers unexpected entry in the zip: ‘parseh-exercise-deck.json’ — that zip goes to Import deck….

5. Where decks live#

Each deck is a folder inside Parseh, under its language’s folder:

exercises/  persian/    everyday-persian/      deck.json            its id, name, language and changed options      items/<id>.json      one exercise each: its markdown, its footnotes, its tags, where it came from      schedule/<id>.json   its state and every answer (no file while it is new)      images/              the pictures its exercises and cards show      audio/               the recordings its cards play  italian/    italiano-primi-passi/  .trash/                  deleted and replaced decks, never emptied by Parseh

Everything is small JSON files, one per exercise and one per exercise’s schedule, so an interrupted write can lose at most the answer being written, and a deck can be read — and if need be mended — with a text editor. Git ignores everything under exercises/ except its README.md: decks are your study, not the toolbox’s code, and they travel by their export or by a backup, never by git.

A deck in exercises/.trash/ comes back by moving its folder back where it was. Its name in the trash says where that is: persian--everyday-persian--20260921-143012 is the deck everyday-persian of the persian folder, deleted on 21 September 2026 at 14:30:12.