publish post "the alias way to backup a mysql dabatase from command line"

Author: Adrian Matei

_posts/2017-04-03-The-alias-way-to-backup-mysql-database-from-command-line.md

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+---
+layout: post
+title: The alias way to backup mysql database from command line
+description: "Tired of searching for the right command every time you need to back up a MySql database via mysqldump. Well make an alias out of it, and it should work for a while."
+author: ama
+permalink: /ama/the-alias-way-to-backup-a-mysql-database-from-command-line
+published: true
+categories: [database]
+tags: [mysql, bash, linux]
+---
+
+As I have told you [before](http://www.codingpedia.org/ama/a-developers-guide-to-using-aliases/), I am really hooked on bash aliases[^2].
+ This blog emphasizes this point and shows how to make a MySql database backup via `mysqldump` with only three words, even with three letters, if you may like.
+
+[^1]: <http://tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/aliases.html>
+[^2]: <http://www.codingpedia.org/ama/a-developers-guide-to-using-aliases/>
+
+So, without further ado, let's see the alias:
+
+```
+
+$ alias mysql-backup-db_name='mysqldump db_name -u db_user -p -h 127.0.0.1 --port 3306 --single-transaction > path_to_back_up_directory/db_name_$(date "+%Y-%m-%d_%H:%M").sql'
+$ mysql-backup-db_name
+```
+
+or, same result with three letters, if you'd like:
+
+```
+
+$ alias mbd='mysqldump db_name -u db_user -p -h 127.0.0.1 --port 3306 --single-transaction > path_to_back_up_directory/db_name_$(date "+%Y-%m-%d_%H:%M").sql'
+$ mbd
+```
+
+<!--more-->
+
+The option `-u`, will ask you for the password. The port number is not mandatory (as it defaults to **3306**), but if you are using other port, you need to specify it.
+
+> I personally prefer the longer alias-approach, as the name is more clear, **there is auto complete**. Besides that I can always `alias-grep` it[^1] - (`alias alias-grep='alias | grep'`),
+ if I need to see how it looks like - using the alias in this case as sort of documentation...
+
+Below there is a concrete example, where I backup the MySQL keycloak database:
+
+```
+$ mysql-backup-keycloak-prod
+    aka
+$ mysqldump keycloak -u keycloak -p -h 127.0.0.1 --port 3306 --single-transaction > ~/backup/db/keycloak_db_$(date "+%Y-%m-%d_%H:%M").sql
+```
+
+That will generate a _.sql_ file in the specified path:
+
+```
+$ ls -lrt ~/backup/db
+-rw-rw-r-- 1 ama ama 199219 Mar 10 07:04 keycloak_db_2017-03-10_07:04.sql
+-rw-rw-r-- 1 ama ama 198489 Apr  3 06:28 keycloak_db_2017-04-03_06:27.sql
+```
+
+We can take things even further, and back-up a remote database from the local machine, after we build a ssh-tunnel[^3] with an alias of course:
+
+```
+alias mysql-tunnel-linode='ssh -L 127.0.0.1:3305:127.0.0.1:3306 ama@w.x.y.z -N'
+alias mysql-backup-keycloak-prod='mysqldump keycloak -u keycloak -p -h 127.0.0.1 --port 3305 --single-transaction > ~/backup/db/keycloak_db_prod_$(date "+%Y-%m-%d_%H:%M").sql'
+```
+
+Same back-up command as before, only the port differs now and is pointing to the tunnel port - 3305.
+
+With this I think I've made my point about the power and versatility of bash aliases.
+
+
+[^3]: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunneling_protocol>
+
+## References