Area Import/Export #406
Description
We need a way to export areas from the database into a text format (JSON, XML, something like that) and to import them. That will protect from database schema changes in the future and provide a human readable way to back up areas.
Since the dabatase is PostgreSQL you can (and should) accomplish complete backups with pgdump or AWS RDS snapshots but they will not tolerate schema changes gracefully.
Another objective for this is to interoperate with external area building software. I've been looking at the possibility of forking something like mudmap2 and modifying it to match Agony Forge's various flags and properties so that I don't have to build a full fledged graphical area editor from scratch. It would be nice to be able to author or edit an area outside of the game and simply import it. I am very interested in making it possible to start building areas sooner rather than later, even when future schema changes may require clearing the database.