Automatic database backup

I use git extensively for version control. Its nice to use git since it backs up the code, but the database still remains unversioned. Well, thankfully, XAMPP has a script that does a database dump. So, I wrote a script to do the dump and then commit it to git.

Step 1

Create a directory in the home directory for the database dump

$ mkdir projectname-database $ cd projectname-database 

Step 2

Initialize git in the directory

$ git init 

Step 3

Do a database dump for the initial commit

$ /opt/lampp/bin/mysqldump -u root database-name > database.sql 

Step 4

Commit the database file

$ git add . $ git commit -am 'Initial database commit' 

Step 5

Now we’ll write a script to do the database dump and add commits. Open your favorite text editor and write the following script. Save the file as probably ‘database-project’ in your home folder

#!/bin/bash /opt/lampp/bin/mysqldump -u root database-name > /home/username/projectname-database/database.sql cd /home/username/projectname-database/ git commit -am 'Database dump at `date`' 

Save the script so that you can run it via a cron.

Step 6

Give the script executable permissions.

chmod a+x /home/username/database-project 

Step 7

Open crontab with the following command

$ crontab -e 

Step 8

Add the following line

00,30 * * * * /home/username/database-project 

This cron will run the script every 30 minutes.

Basically what happens here is the database dump will be taken every 30 minutes and the change will be committed to a git repository allowing you to keep track of the overwriting. I’ve found it quite useful and I hope you will too.