How to skip certain database tables with mysqldump?

Zac_5630 0
Viewed 411101

Is there a way to restrict certain tables from the mysqldump command?

For example, I'd use the following syntax to dump only table1 and table2:

mysqldump -u username -p database table1 table2 > database.sql

But is there a similar way to dump all the tables except table1 and table2? I haven't found anything in the mysqldump documentation, so is brute-force (specifying all the table names) the only way to go?

mysql sql database
11 Answers

You can use the --ignore-table option. So you could do

mysqldump -u USERNAME -pPASSWORD DATABASE --ignore-table=DATABASE.table1 > database.sql

There is no whitespace after -p (this is not a typo).

To ignore multiple tables, use this option multiple times, this is documented to work since at least version 5.0.

If you want an alternative way to ignore multiple tables you can use a script like this:

#!/bin/bash
PASSWORD=XXXXXX
HOST=XXXXXX
USER=XXXXXX
DATABASE=databasename
DB_FILE=dump.sql
EXCLUDED_TABLES=(
table1
table2
table3
table4
tableN   
)
 
IGNORED_TABLES_STRING=''
for TABLE in "${EXCLUDED_TABLES[@]}"
do :
   IGNORED_TABLES_STRING+=" --ignore-table=${DATABASE}.${TABLE}"
done

echo "Dump structure"
mysqldump --host=${HOST} --user=${USER} --password=${PASSWORD} --single-transaction --no-data --routines ${DATABASE} > ${DB_FILE}

echo "Dump content"
mysqldump --host=${HOST} --user=${USER} --password=${PASSWORD} ${DATABASE} --no-create-info --skip-triggers ${IGNORED_TABLES_STRING} >> ${DB_FILE}
Brian_Fisher_438160
user_16649430

In general, you need to use this feature when you don't want or don't have time to deal with a huge table. If this is your case, it's better to use --where option from mysqldump limiting resultset. For example, mysqldump -uuser -ppass database --where="1 = 1 LIMIT 500000" > resultset.sql.

user_14342650

I like Rubo77's solution, I hadn't seen it before I modified Paul's. This one will backup a single database, excluding any tables you don't want. It will then gzip it, and delete any files over 8 days old. I will probably use 2 versions of this that do a full (minus logs table) once a day, and another that just backs up the most important tables that change the most every hour using a couple cron jobs.

#!/bin/sh
PASSWORD=XXXX
HOST=127.0.0.1
USER=root
DATABASE=MyFavoriteDB

now="$(date +'%d_%m_%Y_%H_%M')"
filename="${DATABASE}_db_backup_$now"
backupfolder="/opt/backups/mysql"
DB_FILE="$backupfolder/$filename"
logfile="$backupfolder/"backup_log_"$(date +'%Y_%m')".txt

EXCLUDED_TABLES=(
logs
)
IGNORED_TABLES_STRING=''
for TABLE in "${EXCLUDED_TABLES[@]}"
do :
   IGNORED_TABLES_STRING+=" --ignore-table=${DATABASE}.${TABLE}"
done

echo "Dump structure started at $(date +'%d-%m-%Y %H:%M:%S')" >> "$logfile"
mysqldump --host=${HOST} --user=${USER} --password=${PASSWORD} --single-transaction --no-data --routines ${DATABASE}  > ${DB_FILE} 
echo "Dump structure finished at $(date +'%d-%m-%Y %H:%M:%S')" >> "$logfile"
echo "Dump content"
mysqldump --host=${HOST} --user=${USER} --password=${PASSWORD} ${DATABASE} --no-create-info --skip-triggers ${IGNORED_TABLES_STRING} >> ${DB_FILE}
gzip ${DB_FILE}

find "$backupfolder" -name ${DATABASE}_db_backup_* -mtime +8 -exec rm {} \;
echo "old files deleted" >> "$logfile"
echo "operation finished at $(date +'%d-%m-%Y %H:%M:%S')" >> "$logfile"
echo "*****************" >> "$logfile"
exit 0
user_30255340

For sake of completeness, here is a script which actually could be a one-liner to get a backup from a database, excluding (ignoring) all the views. The db name is assumed to be employees:

ignore=$(mysql --login-path=root1 INFORMATION_SCHEMA \
    --skip-column-names --batch \
    -e "select 
          group_concat(
            concat('--ignore-table=', table_schema, '.', table_name) SEPARATOR ' '
          ) 
        from tables 
        where table_type = 'VIEW' and table_schema = 'employees'")

mysqldump --login-path=root1 --column-statistics=0 --no-data employees $ignore > "./backups/som_file.sql"

You can update the logic of the query. In general using group_concat and concat you can generate almost any desired string or shell command.

user_19276950

Skip certain tables with mysqldump

Suppose there are some test tables in some databases and you want to exclude them from the backup; you can specify using the -- exclude-tables option, which will exclude tables with the name test across all databases:

shell> mysqldump --exclude-tables=test --resultfile=backup_excluding_test.sql

user_74621050
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