Question

I’m writing a shell script (will become a cronjob) that will:

1: dump my production database

2: import the dump into my development database

Between step 1 and 2, I need to clear the development database (drop all tables?). How is this best accomplished from a shell script? So far, it looks like this:

#!/bin/bash
time=`date '+%Y'-'%m'-'%d'`
# 1. export(dump) the current production database
pg_dump -U production_db_name > /backup/dir/backup-${time}.sql

# missing step: drop all tables from development database so it can be re-populated

# 2. load the backup into the development database
psql -U development_db_name < backup/dir/backup-${time}.sql

Answer 1

I’d just drop the database and then re-create it. On a UNIX or Linux system, that should do it:

$ dropdb development_db_name
$ createdb development_db_name

That’s how I do it, actually.