--- title: "How do I search a Confluence export?" canonical: "https://xerj.org/answers/search-confluence-html-export" updated: "2026-08-21" source: "content/answers/search-confluence-html-export.md" --- # How do I search a Confluence export? **TL;DR** — Unzip the Confluence space export to local disk, then run `xerj autoindex` on the folder. In a captured run, body text on a nested page returned 1 hit at `Recovery-procedure_262146.html`. The title came back as Confluence writes it: `PLAT : Recovery procedure`. ## Agent prompt ```text Act as a coding agent. Read https://xerj.org/llms.txt, start a local XERJ node, unzip a Confluence HTML space export to a folder, run `xerj autoindex ./confluence-export --url http://127.0.0.1:9200 --prefix cf --progress plain`, then POST a match_phrase on body for text inside a nested page, POST an exists query on title sorted by ax_path, and report every distinct title and the attachment paths that matched. ``` ## Commands ### Command 1 Note: Index an unzipped Confluence HTML space export from local disk. ```sh xerj autoindex ./confluence-export --url http://127.0.0.1:9200 --prefix cf --progress plain ``` ### Command 2 Note: Find body text that lives on a nested page, and read the title and headings back. ```sh curl -s -XPOST http://127.0.0.1:9200/cf-*/_search -H 'content-type: application/json' -d '{"query":{"match_phrase":{"body":"axolotl recovery procedure"}},"size":5,"_source":["ax_path","ax_format","title","headings"],"track_total_hits":true}' ``` ### Command 3 Note: List every title the export produced, so the two title forms are visible. ```sh curl -s -XPOST http://127.0.0.1:9200/cf-*/_search -H 'content-type: application/json' -d '{"query":{"exists":{"field":"title"}},"size":30,"_source":["ax_path","ax_format","title","headings"],"sort":[{"ax_path":"asc"}],"track_total_hits":true}' ``` ### Command 4 Note: Find text inside a PDF under the attachments tree. ```sh curl -s -XPOST http://127.0.0.1:9200/cf-*/_search -H 'content-type: application/json' -d '{"query":{"match_phrase":{"body":"Axolotl recovery checklist"}},"size":5,"_source":["ax_path","ax_format","ax_locator"],"track_total_hits":true}' ``` ## Index the unzipped export `xerj autoindex ` reads the export as ordinary HTML files on disk. The captured run walked 8 files, read 7 of them and produced 2 datasets with 15 documents live: `cf-docs` with 12 and `cf-styles` with 3. ```sh xerj autoindex ./confluence-export --url http://127.0.0.1:9200 --prefix cf --progress plain ``` The fixture was a folder in Confluence's own export layout. That folder held `