There are different ways to dump a distant database and restore the data in your Scalingo database. The first one involves dumping the data on your local workstation and the second one involves doing the same operations from within a Scalingo one-off container (see application tasks).

Dump and Restore From Your Local Workstation

To dump and restore your database from your local workstation, you need the connection string to connect to your database and a way to access your database.

You can get the connection string of your database in your Scalingo application environment. Go to the ‘Environment’ tab of your dashboard or run the following command:

$ scalingo --app my-app env | grep POSTGRESQL

Your database connection string conforms to the syntax of a generic URI:

postgresql://<username>:<password>@<host>:<port>/<db>

There are two ways to access your database from your local workstation: setting up a tunnel or making your database accessible from anywhere on the Internet.

Setup the Tunnel

$ scalingo --app my-app db-tunnel SCALINGO_POSTGRESQL_URL
Building tunnel to my-db.postgresql.dbs.scalingo.eu:30000
You can access your database on '127.0.0.1:10000'

In this situation you need to use a different connection string than the one from your application environment. The <host> part is replaced by 127.0.0.1 and the <port> is replaced by 10000.

Internet Accessibility

In order to make your database reachable from anywhere on the internet, head to your database dashboard. You first need to force TLS connections to your database. Then toggle “Internet Accessibility” to make it reachable from the Internet.

In this situation, the connection string to use is exactly the same as the one from your application environment.

Dump

The command definition is:

# If we are using the SSH tunnel endpoint:
$ DATABASE_URL=postgresql://<username>:<password>@127.0.0.1:10000/<db>

$ pg_dump --clean --if-exists --format c --dbname $DATABASE_URL --no-owner --no-privileges --no-comments --exclude-schema 'information_schema' --exclude-schema '^pg_*' --file dump.pgsql

Restore

The command definition is:

# We are using the SSH tunnel endpoint:
$ DATABASE_URL=postgresql://<username>:<password>@127.0.0.1:10000/<db>

$ pg_restore --clean --if-exists --no-owner --no-privileges --no-comments --dbname $DATABASE_URL dump.pgsql

Alternatively you can use the Adminer instance provided by Scalingo. More information in the dedicated page.

Dump and Restore From Scalingo One-off Container

You can dump and restore your database remotely using the command-line-tool and a one-off container (see application tasks). The advantage of this method is the network. From your workstation you don’t always have a good bandwidth. From our infrastructure, data transfers will be way faster.

You need to install the PostgreSQL CLI tools in the one-off before executing pg_dump or pg_restore:

$ scalingo --app my-app run bash

[00:00] Scalingo ~ $ dbclient-fetcher psql

Dump & Restore

$ scalingo --app my-app run bash

[00:00] Scalingo ~ $ dbclient-fetcher psql
[00:00] Scalingo ~ $ pg_dump --clean --if-exists --format c --no-owner --no-privileges --no-comments --exclude-schema 'information_schema' --exclude-schema '^pg_*' --dbname $DATABASE_URL --file dump.pgsql
...

# Do something with the dump, e.g. send through FTP or to an external server

[00:00] Scalingo ~ $ pg_restore --clean --if-exists --no-owner --no-privileges --no-comments --dbname $DATABASE_URL dump.pgsql
...
[00:00] Scalingo ~ $ exit
exit

After exiting the one-off container, the dump will be lost. You have to do something with it in the container.