Sure, this is pretty basic, but I never had to do it before, and since I just had a request from a user (that’s a good thing) to bring their blog up to the latest Typo/svn version, I knew it was time to learn. Since you have to do a ’rake migrate on the database to update Typo there’s a chance (usually a good one with bleeding edge Typo) that the database may be worse for wear on the other end of the migration. So, better to do it on a backup/copy of the database. So no big, but I had never done it and had to do some research to learn how. Hopefully this HOWTO will help others figure it out quicker than I did.

First dump a specific database (I’ll call it sample for illistration purposes) enter the following:

mysqldump -u root -p sample > sample-dump.sql

And enter your mySQL root user’s password (this better be different than your system’s root password, or I’m coming for a visit!)

Now you have your database in a flat file named sample.sql. At this point you could backup, copy, move or archive this file, and then restore it using the next steps, or do what I needed to do, reimport it under a different database name.

First you need to create an empty database with the new name you want to use, so login to mySQL as your root user:

mysql -u root -p

Enter your mySQL root user’s password and then create the new database:

create database sample-new

Lastly change into your new database, and then tell it to import the data from the original into this new one:

use sample-new
source sample-dump.sql

Now point your webapp (in my case Typo) to use this ‘new’ database, and muck it up all you want, knowing the original is safe and sound (unless you make a ’typo’).

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