Perhaps it’s because I’ve been in maintenance mode for a little bit that I’ve forgotten how to import a SQL file generated by applications like mysqldump into an existing database, but earlier today while dumping existing data from DevScripts and trying to install it on our testing server, I drew a complete blank.
So I guess this is more a note for me and anyone else who has a tendency to forget nifty little tricks like this one.
A quick way to duplicate MySQL databases is to do the following:
Step 1: Dump the database either through PHPMyAdmin’s export form or through mysqldump (as I mentioned above). Note (usually, it’s mysqldump <database-name> -h<hostname> -u<username> -p<password> if you ommit the -h switch it will default to “localhost”). After you enter the command below and press enter, you will be prompted for a password because you did not enter the password after the -p switch.
$ mysqldump <database-name> -u<username> -p >> somedatabasetable.sql
Step 2: Once you have the sql file, log into mysql and create a database or “use” an existing database – again, ommiting the -h will default to localhost and you will be prompted for a password if you don’t enter a password after the -p switch.
$ mysql -u<username> -p
Step 3: After logging in, you will need to either create a new database and select the database for use with the import, or use an existing database. For this example, we’ll create a new database. Remember to use backticks and not apostrophe’s to create your new MySQL database.
mysql> create database `somedb`
Step 4: Alright! Now we’re ready to start using! Issue a “use” statement to select the empty database
mysql> use `somedb`
Step 5: Remember where you put the SQL file and issue a “source” command:
mysql> source somedatabasetable.sql
The query is executed and if you didn’t mess around with the SQL produced by mysqldump, it should run things flawlessly.
For reference, the database version I was working with is MySQL 5.0.45 and the mysqldump version I was working with is 10.11 on my development rig.
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As an alternative you can dump a sql file into the mysql command line like
mysql -u -p << somedatabasetable.sql
However the sql file will have to have the use `somedb` at the top of the file.
Just what I needed to find out. Thanks a lot.
You’re welcome Miles
Glad the post helped you out.
How can I import multiple sql files using command line?
Ive tried using source command with /*.sql but not is it correct.
@Mario:
To get mysql to import multiple sql files, I first aggregated the files into a single sql file. On WinXP, I was able to use something like:
C:\>Copy *.sql combined.sql
And then within MySQL, I used the source command with the combined.sql file.
I assume there is a similar thing on Unix systems to do the aggregation.
Hope it helps. Cheers!
@ben,
Your mysql file doesn’t need to specify the database to use; you can just add it to “mysql” command like so:
$ mysql -u yourusername -p databasename < dump.sql
choose the database you want to dump in
mysql> type show databases;
mysql> use ….X… database;
mysql> source path.sql
Thats it …u r all set
It really helped me.. thanks a lot!!