Welcome to the Treehouse Community

Want to collaborate on code errors? Have bugs you need feedback on? Looking for an extra set of eyes on your latest project? Get support with fellow developers, designers, and programmers of all backgrounds and skill levels here with the Treehouse Community! While you're at it, check out some resources Treehouse students have shared here.

Looking to learn something new?

Treehouse offers a seven day free trial for new students. Get access to thousands of hours of content and join thousands of Treehouse students and alumni in the community today.

Start your free trial

Development Tools Database Foundations Securing and Maintaining a MySQL Database Backing up and Restoring Databases

Pavle Lucic
Pavle Lucic
10,801 Points
Posted by Pavle Lucic
Pavle Lucic
10,801 Points

What is the purpose of mysqldump?

I really dont understand what is mysqldump and what is its purpose and functions?

1 Answer

Sam Cooper
Sam Cooper
502 Points
Sam Cooper
Sam Cooper
502 Points

Hi Pavle,

In answer to your question, mysqldump is usually used to 'dump' a database or a collection of databases for backup or transfer to another SQL server.

The dump typically contains SQL statements to create the table, populate it, or both. However, mysqldump can also be used to generate files in CSV, other delimited text, or XML format.

A common use case for me as a front end developer it to 'dump' a local database into a .sql file for me to import/upload to a staging or live environment. Using Terminal that might look like this:

// move to the correct folder on my local machine
cd /applications/MAMP/library/bin

// perform a mysqldump to dump my database into a file for use in a different environment
./mysqldump -u root -p my_database_name > /Applications/MAMP/htdocs/folder_name/exported_db.sql

I hope that helps!

Kind Regards, Sam